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AN INLAND VOYAGE 



BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



^Thus sang they in the English boat" 

Marveix 



' > i , >, J , 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1903 

[All rights reserved'^ 






4* 



X;nS 



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

'T'O equip so small a book with a preface 
is, I am half afraid, to sin against pro- 
portion. But a preface is more than an 
author can resist, for it is the reward of his 
labours. When the foundation stone is 
laid, the architect appears with his plans, 
and struts for an hour before the public 
eye. So with the writer in his preface : he 
may have never a word to say, but he must 
show himself for a moment in the portico, 
hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour. 
It is best, in such circumstances, to rep- 
resent a delicate shade of manner between 
humility and superiority : as if the book 
had been written by some one else, and 



vi Preface to First Edition 

you had merely run over it and inserted 
what was good. But for my part I have 
not yet learned the trick to that perfec- 
tion ; I am not yet able to dissemble the 
warmth of my sentiments towards a reader ; 
and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to 
invite him in with country cordiality. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished 
reading this little book in proof, than I 
was seized upon by a distressing apprehen- 
sion. It occurred to me that I might not 
only be the first to read these pages, but 
the last as well ; that I might have pio- 
neered this very smiling tract of country 
all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in 
my steps. The more I thought, the more 
I disliked the notion ; until the distaste 
grew into a sort of panic terror, and I 
rushed into this Preface, which is no more 
than an advertisement for readers. 

What am I to say for my book ? Caleb 
and Joshua brought back from Palestine a 



Preface to First Edition vii 

formidable bunch of grapes ; alas ! my 
book produces naught so nourishing ; and 
for the matter of that, we live in an age 
when people prefer a definition to any 
quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found 
enticing ? for, from the negative point of 
view, I flatter myself this volume has a 
certain stamp. Although it runs to con- 
siderably upwards of two hundred pages, 
it contains not a single reference to the 
imbecility of God's universe, nor so much 
as a single hint that I could have made a 
better one myself. — I really do not know 
where my head can have been. I seem to 
have forgotten all that makes it glorious 
to be man. — 'Tis an omission that renders 
the book philosophically unimportant ; but 
I am in hopes the eccentricity may please 
in frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me, I 
owe many thanks already, indeed I wish 



viii Preface to First Edition 

I owed him nothing else ; but at this 
moment I feel towards him an almost 
exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, 
will become my reader : — if it were only 
to follow his own travels alongside of 
mine. 

R. L. S. 



TO 
SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART. 

My dear Cigarette, 

It was enough that you should have shared so 
liberally in the rains and portages of our voyage ; 
that you should have had so hard a battle to re- 
cover the derelict Arethusa on the flooded Oise ; 
and that you should thenceforth have piloted a 
mere wreck of mankind to Origny Sainte-Benoite 
and a supper so eagerly desired. It was perhaps 
more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously 
complained, that I should have set down all the 
strong language to you, and kept the appropriate 
reflexions for myself. I could not in decency ex- 
pose you to share the disgrace of another and more 
public shipwreck. But now that this voyage of ours 
is going into a cheap edition, that peril, we shall 
hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on the 
burgee. 

But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate 
of our two ships. That, sir, was not a fortunate 
day when we projected the possession of a canal 



X Dedication 

barge ; it was not a fortunate day when we shared 
our day-dream with the most hopeful of day- 
dreamers. For a while, indeed, the world looked 
smilingly. The barge was procured and chris- 
tened, and as the Eleven Thousand Virgins of 
Cologne, lay for some months, the admired of all 
admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls 
of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accomplished 
carpenter of Moret, had made her a centre of emu- 
lous labour ; and you will not have forgotten the 
amount of sweet champagne consumed in the inn 
at the bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen and 
speed to the work. On the financial aspect, I 
would not willingly dwell. The Eleven Thousand 
Virgins of Cologne rotted in the stream where she 
was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the 
breeze ; she was never harnessed to the patient 
track-horse. And when at length she was sold, 
by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were 
sold along with her the Arethusa and the Cigar- 
ette, she of cedar, she, as we knew so keenly on a 
portage, of solid-hearted English oak. Now these 
historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by 
new and alien names. 

R. L. S. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Antwerp to Boom i 

On the Willebroek Canal .... 9 

The Royal Sport Nautique .... 18 

At Maubeuge 28 

On the Sambre Canalised : To Quartes . 36 
Pont Sur-Sambre : 

We are Pedlars 46 

The Travelling Merchant ... 56 

On the Sambre Canalised : To Landrecies . 65 

At Landrecies 74 

Sambre and Oise Canal : Canal Boats . . 82 

The Oise in Flood 91 

Origny Sainte-BenoIte : 

A By-Day 104 

The Company at Table . . . 115 

Down the Oise : To Moy .... 126 
La FfeRE OF Cursed Memory . . . .135 

Down the Oise : Through the Golden Valley 145 



xii Contents 

PAGE 

NoYON Cathedral 149 

Down the Oise: To CoMPifecNE , . .158 

At CoMPiiGNE 162 

Changed Times 170 

Down the Oise : Church Interiors . . 180 
PRf:cY and the Marionettes . . . .191 
Back to the World 209 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 

Al/'E made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. 
A stevedore and a lot of dock por- 
ters took up the two canoes, and ran with 
them for the slip. A crowd of children fol- 
lowed cheering. The Cigarette went off in 
a splash and a bubble of small breaking 
water. Next moment the Arethusa was 
after her. A steamer was coming down, 
men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse 
warnings, the stevedore and his porters 
were bawling from the quay. But in a 
stroke or two the canoes were away out in 
the middle of the Scheldt^ and all steamers, 
and stevedores, and other 'long-shore vani- 
ties were left behind. 



2 An Inland Voyage 

The sun shone brightly ; the tide was 
making — four jolly miles an hour; the wind 
blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For 
my part, I had never been in a canoe under 
sail in my life ; and my first experiment 
out in the middle of this big river, was not 
made without some trepidation. What 
would happen when the wind first caught 
my little canvas ? I suppose it was almost 
as trying a venture into the regions of the 
unknown, as to publish a first book, or to 
marry. But my doubts were not of long 
duration ; and in five minutes you will not 
be surprised to learn that I had tied my 
sheet. 

I own I was a little struck by this cir- 
cumstance myself ; of course, in company 
with the rest of my fellow-men, I had 
always tied the sheet in a sailing-boat ; 
but in so little and crank a concern as a 
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I 
was not prepared to find myself follow the 
same principle ; and it inspired me with 
some contemptuous views of our regard for 
life. It is certainly easier to smoke with 



Antwerp to Boom 3 

the sheet fastened ; but I had never before 
weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco 
against an obvious risk, and gravely elected 
for the comfortable pipe. It is a common- 
place, that we cannot answer for ourselves 
before we have been tried. But it is not 
so common a reflection, and surely more 
consoling, that we usually find ourselves a 
great deal braver and better than we 
thought. I believe this is every one's ex- 
perience : but an apprehension that they 
may belie themselves in the future prevents 
mankind from trumpeting this cheerful 
sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it 
would have saved me much trouble, there 
had been some one to put me in a good 
heart about life when I was younger ; to 
tell me how dangers are most portentous 
on a distant sight ; and how the good in a 
man's spirit will not suffer itself to be over- 
laid, and rarely or never deserts him in the 
hour of need. But we are all for tootling 
on the sentimental flute in literature ; and 
not a man among us will go to the head of 
the march to sound the heady drums. 



4 An Inland Voyage 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge 
or two went past laden with hay. Reeds 
and willows bordered the stream ; and cat- 
tle and gray venerable horses came and 
hung their mild heads over the embank- 
ment. Here and there was a pleasant vil- 
lage among trees, with a noisy shipping 
yard ; here and there a villa in a lawn. The 
wind served us well up the Scheldt and 
thereafter up the Rupel ; and we were run- 
ning pretty free when we began to sight 
the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long 
way on the right bank of the river. The 
left bank was still green and pastoral, with 
alleys of trees along the embankment, and 
here and there a flight of steps to serve a 
ferry, where perhaps there sat a woman 
with her elbows on her knees, or an old 
gentleman with a staff and silver spectacles. 
But Boom and its brickyards grew smokier 
and shabbier with every minute ; until a 
great church with a clock, and a wooden 
bridge over the river, indicated the central 
quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only 



Antwerp to Boom 5 

remarkable for one thing: that the majority 
of the inhabitants have a private opinion 
that they can speak English, which is not 
justified by fact. This gave a kind of hazi- 
ness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel 
de la Navigation, I think it is the worst 
feature of the place. It boasts of a sanded 
parlour, with a bar at one end, looking on 
the street ; and another sanded parlour, 
darker and colder, with an empty birdcage 
and a tricolour subscription box by way of 
sole adornment, where we made shift to 
dine in the company of three uncommuni- 
cative engineer apprentices and a silent 
bagman. The food, as usual in Belgium, 
was of a nondescript occasional character ; 
indeed I have never been able to detect 
anything in the nature of a meal among 
this pleasing people ; they seem to peck 
and trifle with viands all day long in an 
amateur spirit: tentatively French, truly 
German, and somehow falling between the 
two. 

The empty birdcage, swept and gar- 
nished, and with no trace of the old piping 



6 An Inland Voyage 

favourite, save where two wires had been 
pushed apart to hold its lump of sugar, 
carried with it a sort of graveyard cheer. 
The engineer apprentices would have noth- 
ing to say to us, nor indeed to the bag- 
man ; but talked low and sparingly to one 
another, or raked us in the gaslight with a 
gleam of spectacles. For though hand- 
some lads, they were all (in the Scotch 
phrase) barnacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, 
who had been long enough out of England 
to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, 
and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which 
need not here be specified. She spoke to 
us very fluently in her jargon, asked us 
information as to the manners of the pres- 
ent day in England^ and obligingly cor- 
rected us when we attempted to answer. 
But as we were dealing with a woman, 
perhaps our information was not so much 
thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes 
to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its 
superiority. It is good policy, and almost 
necessary in the circumstances. If a man 



Antwerp to Boom 7 

finds a woman admire him, were it only for 
his acquaintance with geography, he will 
begin at once to build upon the admira- 
tion. It is only by unintermittent snub- 
bing that the pretty ones can keep us in 
our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss 
Harlowe would have said, " are such en- 
croachersT For my part, I am body and 
soul with the women ; and after a well-mar- 
ried couple, there is nothing so beautiful in 
the world as the myth of the divine hun- 
tress. It is no use for a man to take to the 
woods ; we know him ; Anthony tried the 
same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time 
of it by all accounts. But there is this 
about some women, which overtops the 
best gymnosophist among men, that they 
suffice to themselves, and can walk in a 
high and cold zone without the counte- 
nance of any trousered being. I declare, 
although the reverse of a professed ascetic, 
I am more obliged to women for this ideal 
than I should be to the majority of them, 
or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous 
kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as 



8 An Inland Voyage 

the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when 
I think of the slim and lovely maidens, 
running the woods all night to the note of 
Diana's horn ; moving among the old oaks, 
as fancy-free as they ; things of the forest 
and the starlight, not touched by the com- 
motion of man's hot and turbid life — 
although there are plenty other ideals that 
I should prefer — I find my heart beat at 
the thought of this one. 'Tis to fail in life, 
but to fail with what a grace ! That is not 
lost which is not regretted. And where — 
here slips out the male — where would be 
much of the glory of inspiring love, if there 
were no contempt to overcome ? 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 

IVTEXT morning, when we set forth on the 
Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy 
and chill. The water of the canal stood at 
about the drinking temperature of tea ; and 
under this cold aspersion, the surface was 
covered with steam. The exhilaration of 
departure, and the easy motion of the boats 
under each stroke of the paddles supported 
us through this misfortune while it lasted ; 
and when the cloud passed and the sun 
came out again, our spirits went up above 
the range of stay-at-home humours. A 
good breeze rustled and shivered in the 
rows of trees that bordered the canal. The 
leaves flickered in and out of the light in 
tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing 
weather to eye and ear ; but down be- 
tween the banks, the wind reached us only 
in faint and desultory puffs. There was 
hardly enough to steer by. Progress was 



10 An Inla7id Voyage 

intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular 
person, of marine antecedents, hailed us 
from the tow-path with a ** Cest vite, mats 
cest longr 

The canal was busy enough. Every now 
and then we met or overtook a long string 
of boats, with great green tillers ; high 
sterns with a window on either side of the 
rudder, and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in 
one of the windows ; a dingy following be- 
hind ; a woman busied about the day's 
dinner, and a handful of children. These 
barges were all tied one behind the other 
with tow ropes, to the number of twenty- 
five or thirty ; and the line was headed and 
kept in motion by a steamer of strange con- 
struction. It had neither paddle-wheel nor 
screw ; but by some gear not rightly com- 
prehensible to the unmechanical mind, it 
fetched up over its bow a small bright 
chain which lay along the bottom of the 
canal, and paying it out again over the 
stern, dragged itself forward, link by link, 
with its whole retinue of loaded skows. 
Until one had found out the key to the 



On the Willebroek Canal n 

enigma, there was something solemn and 
uncomfortable in the progress of one of 
these trains, as it moved gently along the 
water with nothing to mark its advance 
but an eddy alongside dying away into the 
wake. 

Of all the creatures of commercial enter- 
prise, a canal barge is by far the most de- 
lightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
and then you see it sailing high above the 
tree- tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the 
aqueduct, sailing through the green corn- 
lands : the most picturesque of things am- 
phibious. Or the horse plods along at a 
foot-pace as if there were no such thing as 
business in the world ; and the man dream- 
ing at the tiller sees the same spire on the 
horizon all day long. It is a mystery how 
things ever get to their destination at this 
rate ; and to see the barges waiting their 
turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
easily the world may be taken. There 
should be many contented spirits on board, 
for such a life is both to travel and to stay 
at home. 



12 An Inland Voyage 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you 
go along ; the banks of the canal slowly 
unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes ; 
the barge floats by great forests and through 
great cities with their public buildings and 
their lamps at night ; and for the bargee, 
in his floating home, " travelling abed," it is 
merely as if he were listening to another 
man's story or turning the leaves of a pict- 
ure book in which he had no concern. He 
may take his afternoon walk in some for- 
eign country on the banks of the canal, and 
then come home to dinner at his own fire- 
side. 

There is not enough exercise in such a 
life for any high measure of health ; but a 
high measure of health is only necessary 
for unhealthy people. The slug of a fel- 
low, who is never ill nor well, has a quiet 
time of it in life, and dies all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee 
than occupy any position under Heaven 
that required attendance at an office. 
There are few callings, I should say, where 
a man gives up less of his liberty in return 



On the Willebroek Canal 13 

for regular meals. The bargee is on ship- 
board — he is master in his own ship — he 
can land whenever he will — he can never 
be kept beating off a lee-shore a whole 
frosty night when the sheets are as hard 
as iron ; and so far as I can make out, 
time stands as nearly still with him as is 
compatible with the return of bed-time or 
the dinner-hour. It is not easy to see why 
a bargee should ever die. 

Half-way between Willebroek and Ville- 
vorde^ in a beautiful reach of canal like a 
squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. 
There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and 
a bottle of wine on board the AretJmsa ; 
and two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus 
on board the Cigarette. The master of the 
latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the 
course of disembarcation ; but observing 
pleasantly that it might still be cooked h la 
papier, he dropped it into the Etna, in its 
covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed 
in a blink of fine weather ; but we had not 
been two minutes ashore, before the wind 
freshened into half a gale, and the rain 



14 An Inlaitd Voyage 

began to patter on our shoulders. We sat 
as close about the Etna as we could. The 
spirits burned with great ostentation ; the 
grass caught flame every minute or two, 
and had to be trodden out ; and before 
long, there were several burnt fingers of the 
party. But the solid quantity of cookery 
accomplished, was out of proportion with 
so much display; and when we desisted, 
after two applications of the fire, the sound 
Ggg was little more than loo-warm ; and as 
for h la papier, it was a cold and sordid 
fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg- 
shell. We made shift to roast the other 
two, by putting them close to the burning 
spirits ; and that with better success. And 
then we uncorked the bottle of wine, and 
sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons 
over our knees. It rained smartly. Dis- 
comfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable 
and makes no nauseous pretensions to the 
contrary, is a vastly humorous business ; and 
people well steeped and stupefied in the 
open air, are in a good vein for laughter. 
From this point of view, even egg a la 



On the Willebroek Canal 15 

papier offered by way of food, may pass 
muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. 
But this manner of jest, although it may 
be taken in good part, does not invite repe- 
tition ; and from that time forward, the 
Etna voyaged like a gentleman in the locker 
of the Cigarette, 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that 
when lunch was over and we got aboard 
again and made sail, the wind promptly 
died away. The rest of the journey to 
Villevorde, we still spread our canvas to the 
unfavouring air ; and with now and then a 
puff, and now and then a spell of paddling, 
drifted along from lock to lock, between 
the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape ; or 
rather a mere green water-lane, going on 
from village to village. Things had a 
settled look, as in places long lived in. 
Crop-headed children spat upon us from 
the bridges as we went below, with a true 
conservative feeling. But even more con- 
servative were the fishermen, intent upon 
their floats, who let us go by without one 



1 6 An Inland Voyage 

glance. They perched upon sterlings and 
buttresses and along the slope of the em- 
bankment, gently occupied. They were 
indifferent like pieces of dead nature. 
They did not move any more than if they 
had been fishing in an old Dutch print. 
The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but 
they continued in one stay like so many 
churches established by law. You might 
have trepanned every one of their innocent 
heads, and found no more than so much 
coiled fishing line below their skulls. I do 
not care for your stalwart fellows in india- 
rubber stockings breasting up mountain 
torrents with a salmon rod ; but I do dearly 
love the class of man who plies his unfruit- 
ful art, for ever and a day, by still and de- 
populated waters. 

At the last lock just beyond Villevorde, 
there was a lock mistress who spoke 
French comprehensibly, and told us we 
were still a couple of leagues from Brzissels. 
At the same place, the rain began again. 
It fell in straight, parallel lines ; and the 
surface of the canal was thrown up into an 



On the Willebroek Canal 17 

infinity of little crystal fountains. There 
were no beds to be had in the neighbour- 
hood. Nothing for it but to lay the sails 
aside and address ourselves to steady 
paddling in the rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks 
and long lines of shuttered windows, and 
fine old trees standing in groves and ave- 
nues, gave a rich and sombre aspect in the 
rain and the deepening dusk to the shores 
of the canal. I seem to have seen some- 
thing of the same effect in engravings : 
opulent landscapes, deserted and overhung 
with the passage of storm. And through- 
out we had the escort of a hooded cart, 
which trotted shabbily along the tow-path, 
and kept at an almost uniform distance in 
our wake. 

2 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 

T^HE rain took off near Laeken. But the 
sun was already down ; the air was 
chill ; and we had scarcely a dry stitch 
between the pair of us. Nay, now we 
found ourselves near the end of the AlUe 
Verte^ and on the very threshold of Brussels 
we were confronted by a serious difficulty. 
The shores were closely lined by canal 
boats waiting their turn at the lock. No- 
where was there any convenient landing- 
place ; nowhere so much as a stable-yard 
to leave the canoes in for the night. We 
scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet 
where some sorry fellows were drinking 
with the landlord. The landlord was 
pretty round with us ; he knew of no 
coach-house or stable-yard, nothing of the 
sort ; and seeing we had come with no 
mind to drink, he did not conceal his im- 
patience to be rid of us. One of the sorry 



The Royal Sport N antique 19 

fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in 
the corner of the basin there was a slip, he 
informed us, and something else besides, 
not very clearly defined by him, but hope- 
fully construed by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the 
corner of the basin ; and at the top of it 
two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. 
The Arethusa addressed himself to these. 
One of them said there would be no diffi- 
culty about a night's lodging for our boats ; 
and the other, taking a cigarette from his 
lips, inquired if they were made by Scarle 
& Son. The name was quite an introduc- 
tion. Half-a-dozen other young men came 
out of the boat-house bearing the super- 
scription Royal Sport Nautique, and 
joined in the talk. They were all very 
polite, voluble and enthusiastic ; and their 
discourse was interlarded with English 
boating terms, and the names of English 
boat-builders and English clubs. I do not 
know, to my shame, any spot in my native 
land where I should have been so warmly 
received by the same number of people. 



20 An Inland Voyage 

We were English boating-men, and the 
Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. 
I wonder if French Huguenots were as 
cordially greeted by English Protestants 
when they came across the Channel out 
of great tribulation. But after all, what 
religion knits people so closely as a com- 
mon sport ? 

The canoes were carried into the boat- 
house ; they were washed down for us by 
the Club servants, the sails were hung out 
to dry, and everything made as snug and 
tidy as a picture. And in the meanwhile 
we were led upstairs by our new-found 
brethren, for so more than one of them 
stated the relationship, and made free of 
their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that 
one a towel, a third and fourth helped us 
to undo our bags. And all the time such 
questions, such assurances of respect and 
sympathy ! I declare I never knew what 
glory was before. 

" Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is 
the oldest club in Belgiumr 

" We number two hundred." 



The Royal Sport Nautique 21 

" We " — this is not a substantive speech, 
but an abstract of many speeches, the im- 
pression left upon my mind after a great 
deal of talk ; and very youthful, pleasant, 
natural and patriotic it seems to me to be 
— '' We have gained all races, except those 
where we were cheated by the French,'' 

** You must leave all your wet things to 
be dried." 

** O! entre frcres ! In any boathouse in 
England w^ should find the same." (I cor- 
dially hope they might.) 

** En Anglctcrre, vous employ ez des sliding- 
seats J nest-ce pas ? " 

" We are all employed in commerce dur- 
ing the day ; but in the evening, voyez vous, 
nous sommes serieiix''' 

These were the words. They were all 
employed over the frivolous mercantile 
concerns of Belgium during the day ; but 
in the evening they found some hours for 
the serious concerns of life. I may have a 
wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that was 
a very wise remark. People connected 
with literature and philosophy are busy all 



22 An Inland Voyage 

their days in getting rid of second-hand 
notions and false standards. It is their 
profession, in the sweat of their brows, 
by dogged thinking, to recover their old 
fresh view of life, and distinguish what 
they really and originally like, from what 
they have only learned to tolerate perforce. 
And these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had 
the distinction still quite legible in their 
hearts. They had still those clean percep- 
tions of what is nice and nasty, what is 
interesting and what is dull, which envious 
old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The 
nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's 
hug of custom gradually squeezing the life 
out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for 
these happy-star'd young Belgians. They 
still knew that the interest they took in 
their business was a trifling affair compared 
to their spontaneous, long-suffering affec- 
tion for nautical sports. To know what 
you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen 
to what the world tells you you ought to 
prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. 
Such a man may be generous ; he may be 



The Royal Sport NatUique 23 

honest in something more than the com- 
mercial sense ; he may love his friends 
with an elective, personal sympathy, and 
not accept them as an adjunct of the sta- 
tion to which he has been called. He 
may be a man, in short, acting on his own 
instincts, keeping in his own shape that 
God made him in ; and not a mere crank in 
the social engine house, welded on princi- 
ples that he does not understand, and for 
purposes that he does not care for. 

For will anyone dare to tell me that 
business is more entertaining than fooling 
among boats ? He must have never seen 
a boat, or never seen an ofifice, who says so. 
And for certain the one is a great deal 
better for the health. There should be 
nothing so much a man's business as his 
amusements. Nothing but money-grubbing 
can be put forward to the contrary ; no one 
but 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a 



24 An Inland Voyage 

lying cant that would represent the mer- 
chant and the banker as people disinter- 
estedly toiling for mankind, and then most 
useful when they are most absorbed in 
their transactions ; for the man is more im- 
portant than his services. And when my 
Royal Nautical Sportsman shall have so far 
fallen from his hopeful youth that he can- 
not pluck up an enthusiasm over anything 
but his ledger, I venture to doubt whether 
he will be near so nice a fellow, and 
whether he would welcome, with so good 
a grace, a couple of drenched Englishmen 
paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes 
and drunk a glass of pale ale to the Club's 
prosperity, one of their number escorted us 
to an hotel. He would not join us at our 
dinner, but he had no objection to a glass 
of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing ; and 
I begin to understand why prophets were 
unpopular in Judcea, where they were best 
known. For three stricken hours did this 
excellent young man sit beside us to dilate 
on boats and boat-races ; and before he left, 



The Royal Sport N antique 25 

he was kind enough to order our bed-room 
candles. 

We endeavoured now and again to 
change the subject ; but the diversion did 
not last a moment : the Royal Nautical 
Sportsman bridled, shied, answered the 
question, and then breasted once more into 
the swelling tide of his subject. I call it 
his subject ; but I think it was he who was 
subjected. The Arethusa, who holds all 
racing as a creature of the devil, found him- 
self in a pitiful dilemma. He durst not 
own his ignorance for the honour of Old 
England, and spoke away about English 
clubs and English oarsmen whose fame had 
never before come to his ears. Several 
times, and, once above all, on the question 
of sliding-seats, he was within an ace of 
exposure. As for the Cigarette, who has 
rowed races in the heat of his blood, but 
now disowns these slips of his wanton 
youth, his case was still more desperate ; 
for the Royal Nautical proposed that he 
should take an oar in one of their eights on 
the morrow, to compare the English with 



26 An Inland Voyage 

the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend 
perspiring in his chair whenever that par- 
ticular topic came up. And there was yet 
another proposal which had the same effect 
on both of us. It appeared that the cham- 
pion canoeist of Europe (as well as most 
other champions) was a Royal Nautical 
Sportsman. And if we would only wait un- 
til the Sunday^ this infernal paddler would 
be so condescending as to accompany us 
on our next stage. Neither of us had the 
least desire to drive the coursers of the sun 
against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we 
countermanded our candles, and ordered 
some brandy and water. The great billows 
had gone over our head. The Royal Nauti- 
cal Sportsmen were as nice young fellows 
as a man would wish to see, but they were 
a trifle too young and a thought too nauti- 
cal for us. We began to see that we were 
old and cynical ; we liked ease and the 
agreeable rambling of the human mind 
about this and the other subject ; we did 
not want to disgrace our native land by 



The Royal Sport Nmitique 27 

messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the 
wake of the champion canoeist. In short, 
we had recourse to flight. It seemed un- 
grateful, but we tried to make that good on 
a card loaded with sincere compliments. 
And indeed it was no time for scruples; 
we seemed to feel the hot breath of the 
champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE 

pARTLY from the terror we had of our 
good friends the Royal Nauticals^ 
partly from the fact that there were no 
fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels 
and Charleroi, we concluded that we should 
travel by train across the frontier, boats 
and all. Fifty-five locks in a day's journey, 
was pretty well tantamount to trudging the 
whole distance on foot, with the canoes 
upon our shoulders, an object of astonish- 
ment to the trees on the canal side, and 
of honest derision to all right-thinking 
children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is 
a difficult matter for the Arethusa. He is 
somehow or other, a marked man for the 
official eye. Wherever he journeys, there 
are the officers gathered together. Treaties 
are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, am- 
bassadors, and consuls sit throned in state 



Ai Matibeuge 29 

from China to Peru^ and the Union Jack 
flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under 
these safeguards, portly clergymen, school- 
mistresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, 
and all the ruck and rabble of British tour- 
istry pour unhindered, Murray in hand, 
over the railways of the continent, and yet 
the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in 
the meshes, while these great fish go on 
their way rejoicing. If he travels without 
a passport, he is cast, without any figure 
about the matter, into noisome dungeons: 
if his papers are in order, he is suffered to 
go his way indeed, but not until he has 
been humiliated by a general incredulity. 
He is a born British subject, yet he has 
never succeeded in persuading a single offi- 
cial of his nationality. He flatters himself 
he is indifferent honest ; yet he is rarely 
taken for anything better than a spy, and 
there is no absurd and disreputable means 
of livelihood, but has been attributed to 
him in some heat of official or popular 
distrust. . . . 

For the life of me I cannot understand 



30 A 71 Inland Voyage 

it. I too have been knolled to church, and 
sat at good men's feasts ; but I bear no 
mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack 
Indian to their official spectacles. I might 
come from any part of the globe, it seems, 
except from where I do. My ancestors 
have laboured in vain, and the glorious 
Constitution cannot protect me in my 
walks abroad. It is a great thing, believe 
me, to present a good normal type of the 
nation you belong to. 

Nobody else was asked for his papers 
on the way to Maubeuge ; but I was ; and 
although I clung to my rights, I had to 
choose at last between accepting the 
humiliation and being left behind by the 
train. I was sorry to give way ; but I 
wanted to get to Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very 
good inn, the Grand Cerf. It seemed to 
be inhabited principally by soldiers and 
bagmen ; at least, these were all that we 
saw, except the hotel servants. We had to 
stay there some time, for the canoes were 
in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck 



At Maubeiige 31 

hopelessly in the custom-house until we 
went back to liberate them. There was 
nothing to do, nothing to see. We had 
good meals, which was a great matter ; 
but that was all. 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon 
a charge of drawing the fortifications : a 
feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. 
And besides, as I suppose each belligerent 
nation has a plan of the other's fortified 
places already, these precautions are of the 
nature of shutting the stable door after the 
steed is away. But I have no doubt they 
help to keep up a good spirit at home. It 
is a great thing if you can persuade people 
that they are somehow or other partakers 
in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. 
Even the Freemasons, who have been 
shown up to satiety, preserve a kind of 
pride ; and not a grocer among them, how- 
ever honest, harmless and empty-headed 
he may feel himself to be at bottom, but 
comes home from one of their coenacula 
with a portentous significance for himself. 

It is an odd thing, how happily two 



32 An Inland Voyage 

people, if there are two, can live in a place 
where they have no acquaintance. I think 
the spectacle of a whole life in which you 
have no part, paralyses personal desire. 
You are content to become a mere spec- 
tator. The baker stands in his door ; the 
colonel with his three medals goes by to 
the caf^ at night ; the troops drum and 
trumpet and man the ramparts, as bold as 
so many lions. It would task language to 
say how placidly you behold all this. In a 
place where you have taken some root, you 
are provoked out of your indifference ; you 
have a hand in the game ; your friends are 
fighting with the army. But in a strange 
town, not small enough to grow too soon 
familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself 
out for travellers, you stand so far apart 
from the business, that you positively for- 
get it would be possible to go nearer ; you 
have so little human interest around you, 
that you do not remember yourself to be a 
man. Perhaps, in a very short time, you 
would be one no longer. Gymnosophists 
go into a wood, with all nature seething 



At Maubeuge 33 

around them, with romance on every side ; 
it would be much more to the purpose, if 
they took up their abode in a dull country 
town, where they should see just so much 
of humanity as to keep them from desiring 
more, and only the stale externals of man's 
life. These externals are as dead to us as 
so many formalities, and speak a dead 
language in our eyes and ears. They have 
no more meaning than an oath or a saluta- 
tion. We are so much accustomed to see 
married couples going to church of a Suri- 
day that we have clean forgotten what they 
represent ; and novelists are driven to re- 
habilitate adultery, no less, when they wish 
to show us what a beautiful thing it is for 
a man and a woman to live for each other. 
One person in Maubeuge, however, showed 
me something more than his outside. That 
was the driver of the hotel omnibus : a 
mean-enough looking little man, as well as 
I can remember ; but with a spark of some- 
thing human in his soul. He had heard of 
our little journey, and came to me at once 
in envious sympathy. How he longed to 
3 



34 An Inland Voyage 

travel ! he told me. How he longed to be 
somewhere else, and see the round world 
before he went into the grave ! '' Here I 
am," said he. '' I drive to the station. 
Well. And then I drive back again to the 
hotel. And so on every day and all the 
week round. My God, is that life?" I 
could not say I thought it was — for him. 
He pressed me to tell him where I had 
been, and where I hoped to go ; and as he 
listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might 
not this have been a brave African travel- 
ler, or gone to the Indies after Drake? 
But it is an evil age for the gipsily inclined 
among men. He who can sit squarest on 
a three-legged stool, he it is who has the 
wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the 
omnibus for the Grand Cerf f Not very 
likely, I believe ; for I think he was on the 
eve of mutiny when we passed through, 
and perhaps our passage determined him 
for good. Better a thousand times that 
he should be a tramp, and mend pots and 
pans by the wayside, and sleep under trees, 



At Matibeuge 35 

and see the dawn and the sunset every day 
above a new horizon. I think I hear you 
say that it is a respectable position to drive 
an omnibus? Very well. What right has 
he who likes it not, to keep those who 
would like it dearly out of this respectable 
position? Suppose a dish were not to my 
taste, and you told me that it was a favour- 
ite among the rest of the company, what 
should I conclude from that ? Not to fin- 
ish the dish against my stomach, I suppose. 
Respectability is a very good thing in its 
w^ay, but it does not rise superior to all 
considerations. I w^ould not for a moment 
venture to hint that it was a matter of 
taste ; but I think I will go as far as this : 
that if a position is admittedly unkind, 
uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superflu- 
ously useless, although it were as respect- 
able as the Church of Englaiid, the sooner 
a man is out of it, the better for himself, 
and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 
TO QUARTES 

A BOUT three in the afternoon the whole 
establishment of the Gravid Cerf ac- 
companied us to the water's edge. The 
man of the omnibus was there with hag- 
gard eyes. Poor cagebird ! Do I not re- 
member the time when I myself haunted 
the station, to watch train after train carry 
its complement of freemen into the night, 
and read the names of distant places on 
the time-bills with indescribable longings? 
We wxre not clear of the fortifications 
before the rain began. The wind was con- 
trary, and blew in furious gusts ; nor were 
the aspects of nature any more clement 
than the doings of the sky. For we passed 
through a stretch of blighted country, 
sparsely covered with brush, but hand- 
somely enough diversified with factory 



On the Sambre Canalised 37 

chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow 
among some pollards, and there smoked 
a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the 
wind blew so hard, we could get little else 
to smoke. There were no natural objects 
in the neighbourhood, but some sordid 
workshops. A group of children headed 
by a tall girl stood and watched us from a 
little distance all the time we stayed. I 
heartily wonder what they thought of us. 
At Hautinont, the lock was almost im- 
passable ; the landing place being steep and 
high, and the launch at a long distance. 
Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a 
hand. They refused any reward ; and, 
what is much better, refused it handsomely, 
without conveying any sense of insult. 
** It is a way we have in our countryside," 
said they. And a very becoming way it is. 
In Scotla7tdy where also you will get ser- 
vices for nothing, the good people reject 
your money as if you had been trying to 
corrupt a voter. When people take the 
trouble to do dignified acts, it is worth 
while to take a little more, and allow the 



38 An Inland Voyage 

dignity to be common to all concerned. 
But in our brave Saxon countries, where 
we plod three score years and ten in the 
mud, and the wind keeps singing in our 
ears from birth to burial, we do our good 
and bad with a high hand and almost offen- 
sively ; and make even our alms a witness- 
bearing and an act of war against the 
wrong. 

After Hautinont, the sun came forth 
again and the wind went down ; and a little 
paddling took us beyond the iron-works 
and through a delectable land. The river 
wound among low hills, so that sometimes 
the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it 
stood right ahead, and the river before us 
was one sheet of intolerable glory. On 
either hand, meadows and orchards bor- 
dered, with a margin of sedge and water 
flowers, upon the river. The hedges were 
of great height, woven about the trunks of 
hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were 
often very small, looked like a series of 
bowers along the stream. There was never 
any prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with its 



Oil the Sambre Canalised 39 

trees would look over the nearest hedge- 
row, just to make a middle distance for the 
sky ; but that was all. The heaven was 
bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after the 
rain, was of enchanting purity. The river 
doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip 
of mirror glass ; and the dip of the paddles 
set the flowers shaking along the brink. 

In the meadows wandered black and 
white cattle fantastically marked. One 
beast, with a white head and the rest of 
the body glossy black, came to the edge to 
drink, and stood gravely twitching his ears 
at me as I went by, like some sort of pre- 
posterous clergyman in a play. A moment 
after I heard a loud plunge, and, turning 
my head, saw the clergyman struggling to. 
shore. The bank had given way under his 
feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living 
things except a few birds and a great many 
fishermen. These sat along the edges of the 
meadows, sometimes with one rod, some- 
times with as many as half a score. They 
seemed stupefied with contentment ; and 



40 An Inland Voyage 

when we induced them to exchange a few 
words with us about the weather, their 
voices sounded quiet and far-away. There 
was a strange diversity of opinion among 
them as to the kind of fish for which they 
set their lures; although they were all 
agreed in this, that the river was abun- 
dantly supplied. Where it was plain that 
no two of them had ever caught the same 
kind of fish, we could not help suspecting 
that perhaps not any one of them had ever 
caught a fish at all. I hope, since the 
afternoon was so lovely, that they were one 
and all rewarded ; and that a silver booty 
went home in every basket for the pot. 
Some of my friends would cry shame on 
me for this ; but I prefer a man, were he 
only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills 
in all God's waters. I do not affect fishes 
unless when cooked in sauce ; whereas an 
angler is an important piece of river scen- 
ery, and hence deserves some recognition 
among canoeists. He can always tell you 
where you are after a mild fashion ; and his 
quiet presence serves to accentuate the soli- 



On the Sambre Canalised 41 

tude and stillness, and remind you of the 
glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to 
and fro among his little hills, that it was 
past six before we drew near the lock at 
Quartes. There were some children on the 
tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into 
a chafifing talk as they ran along beside 
us. It was in vain that I warned him. In 
vain I told him, in English, that boys were 
the most dangerous creatures; and if once 
you began with them, it was safe to end 
in a shower of stones. For my own part, 
whenever anything was addressed to me, 
I smiled gently and shook my head as 
though I were an inoffensive person inade- 
quately acquainted with French. For in- 
deed I have had such experience at home, 
that I would sooner meet many wild ani- 
mals than a troop of healthy urchins. 

But I was doing injustice to these peace- 
able young Hainaulters. When the Cigar- 
ette went off to make inquiries, I got out 
upon the bank to smoke a pipe and super- 
intend the boats, and became at once the 



42 An Inlaiid Voyage 

centre of much amiable curiosity. The 
children had been joined by this time by 
a young woman and a mild lad who had 
lost an arm ; and this gave me more secur- 
ity. When I let slip my first word or so 
in French, a little girl nodded her head 
with a comical grown-up air. " Ah, you 
see," she said, '' he understands well enough 
now ; he was just making believe." And 
the little group laughed together very good 
naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they 
heard we came from England ; and the 
little girl proffered the information that 
England was an island '* and a far way 
from here — bieji loin d'ici.** 

"Ay, you may say that, a far way from 
here," said the lad with one arm. 

I was as nearly home-sick as ever I was 
in my life ; they seemed to make it such 
an incalculable distance to the place where 
I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. 
And I observed one piece of delicacy in 
these children, which is worthy of record. 



On the Sainbre Canalised 43 

They had been deafening us for the last 
hundred yards with petitions for a sail ; 
ay, and they deafened us to the same tune 
next morning when we came to start ; but 
then, when the canoes were lying empty, 
there was no word of any such petition. 
Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the 
water in so crank a vessel ? I hate cyni- 
cism a great deal worse than I do the devil ; 
unless perhaps the two were the same 
thing ? And yet 'tis a good tonic ; the 
cold tub and bath-towel of the sentiments ; 
and positively necessary to life in cases of 
advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my cos- 
tume. They could not make enough of 
my red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
awe. 

" They make them like that in England^' 
said the boy with one arm. I was glad 
he did not know how badly we make them 
in England now-a-days. "They are for 
people who go away to sea," he added, 
*' and to defend one's life against great 
fish." 



44 An Inland Voyage 

I felt I was becoming a more and more 
romantic figure to the little group at every 
word. And so I suppose I was. Even my 
pipe, although it was an ordinary French 
clay, pretty well *^ trousered," as they call 
it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a 
thing coming from so far away. And if 
my feathers were not very fine in them- 
selves, they were all from over seas. One 
thing in my outfit, however, tickled them 
out of all politeness ; and that was the 
bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I 
suppose they were sure the mud at any 
rate was a home product. The little girl 
(who was the genius of the party) displayed 
her own sabots in competition ; and I wish 
you could have seen how gracefully and 
merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk can, a great 
amphora of hammered brass, stood some 
way off upon the sward. I was glad of an 
opportunity to divert public attention from 
myself, and return some of the compli- 
ments I had received. So I admired it 
cordially both for form and colour, telling 



On the Sambre Canalised 45 

them, and very truly, that it was as beauti- 
ful as gold. They were not surprised. The 
things were plainly the boast of the country- 
side. And the children expatiated on the 
costliness of the amphorce, which sell some- 
times as high as thirty francs apiece ; told 
me how they were carried on donkeys, one 
on either side of the saddle, a brave capari- 
son in themselves ; and how they were to 
be seen all over the district, and at the 
larger farms in great number and of great 
size. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
WE ARE PEDLARS 

'HTHE Cigarette returned with good news. 
There were beds to be had some ten 
minutes* walk from where we were, at a 
place called Pont. We stowed the canoes 
in a granary, and asked among the children 
for a guide. The circle at once widened 
round us, and our oilers of reward were 
received in dispiriting silence. We were 
plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children ; 
they might speak to us in public places, 
and where they had the advantage of num- 
bers ; but it was another thing to venture 
off alone with two uncouth and legendary 
characters, who had dropped from the 
clouds upon their hamlet this quiet after- 
noon, sashed and beknived, and with a 
flavour of great voyages. The owner of 
the granary came to our assistance, singled 



Pont-su7'-Sambre 47 

out one little fellow and threatened him 
with corporalities ; or I suspect we should 
have had to find the way for ourselves. 
As it was, he was more frightened at the 
granary man than the strangers, having 
perhaps had some experience of the for- 
mer. But I fancy his little heart must 
have been going at a fine rate ; for he kept 
trotting at a respectful distance in front, 
and looking back at us with scared eyes. 
Not otherwise may the children of the 
young world have guided Jove or one of 
his Olympia7i compeers on an adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Qiiartes with 
its church and bickering windmill. The 
hinds were trudging homewards from the 
fields. A brisk little old woman passed us 
by. She was seated across a donkey be- 
tween a pair of glittering milk cans ; and, 
as she went, she kicked jauntily with her 
heels upon the donkey's side, and scattered 
shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It 
was notable that none of the tired men 
took the trouble to reply. Our conductor 
soon led us out of the lane and across 



48 An Inland Voyage 

country. The sun had gone down, but the 
west in front of us was one lake of level 
gold. The path wandered a while in the 
open, and then passed under a trellis like a 
bower indefinitely prolonged. On either 
hand were shadowy orchards ; cottages lay 
low among the leaves and sent their smoke 
to heaven ; every here and there, in an 
opening, appeared the great gold face of 
the west. 

I never saw the Cigarette in such an 
idyllic frame of mind. He waxed posi- 
tively lyrical in praise of country scenes. 
I was little less exhilarated myself ; the 
mild air of the evening, the shadows, the 
rich lights and the silence, made a sym- 
phonious accompaniment about our walk ; 
and we both determined to avoid towns 
for the future and sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two 
houses, and turned the party out into a 
wide muddy high-road, bordered, as far as 
the eye could reach on either hand, by an 
unsightly village. The houses stood well 
back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on 



Pont-stir'Sambre 49 

either side of the road, where there were 
stacks of firewood, carts, barrows, rubbish 
heaps, and a little doubtful grass. Away 
on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the 
middle of the street. What it had been 
in past ages, I know not : probably a hold 
in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an 
illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and 
near the bottom an iron letter-box. 

The inn to which we had been recom- 
mended at Qiiartes was full, or else the 
landlady did not like our looks. I ought 
to say, that with our long, damp india-rub- 
ber bags, we presented rather a doubtful 
type of civilisation : like rag and bone men, 
the Cigarette imagined. " These gentle- 
men are pedlars ? " — Ces messieurs sont des 
marchands ? — asked the landlady. And 
then, without wai^^ing for an answer, which 
I suppose she thought superfluous in so 
plain a case, recommended us to a butcher 
who lived hard by the tower and took in 
travellers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was 
flitting, and all his beds were taken down. 



50 An Inla7id Voyage 

Or else he didn't like our look. As a part- 
ing shot, we had '' These gentlemen are 
pedlars ?" 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We 
could no longer distinguish the faces of the 
people who passed us by with an inarticu- 
late good evening. And the householders 
of Pont seemed very economical with their 
oil ; for we saw not a single window lighted 
in all that long village. I believe it is the 
longest village in the world ; but I daresay 
in our predicament every pace counted 
three times over. We were much cast 
down when we came to the last auberge ; 
and looking in at the dark door, asked tim- 
idly if we could sleep there for the night. 
A female voice assented in no very friendly 
tones. We clapped the bags down and 
found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a 
red glow in the chinks and ventilators of 
the stove. But now the landlady lit a 
lamp to see her new guests ; I suppose the 
darkness was what saved us another expul- 
sion ; for I cannot say she looked gratified 



Pont-suV'Sainbre 5 1 

at our appearance. We were in a large 
bare apartment, adorned with two allegori- 
cal prints of Music and Painting, and a 
copy of the Law against Public Drunken- 
ness. On one side, there was a bit of a 
bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. Two 
labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes 
of extreme weariness ; a plain-looking lass 
bustled about with a sleepy child of two ; 
and the landlady began to derange the pots 
upon the stove and set some beef-steak to 
grill. 

" These gentlemen are pedlars ? " she 
asked sharply. And that was all the con- 
versation forthcoming. We began to think 
we might be pedlars after all. I never 
knew a population with so narrow a range 
of conjecture as the inn-keepers of Pont-sur- 
Sambre. But manners and bearing have 
not a wider currency than bank-notes. 
You have only to get far enough out of 
your beat, and all your accomplished airs 
will go for nothing. These Hainaulters 
could see no difference between us and 
the average pedlar. Indeed we had some 



52 An Inland Voyage 

grounds for reflection while the steak was 
getting ready, to see how perfectly they 
accepted us at their own valuation, and 
how our best politeness and best efforts at 
entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably 
with the character of packmen. At least 
it seemed a good account of the profession 
in France, that even before such judges, we 
could not beat them at our own weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The 
two hinds (and one of them looked sadly 
worn and white in the face, as though sick 
with over work and under feeding) supped 
off a single plate of some sort of bread- 
berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a 
small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar 
candy, and one tumbler of swipes. The 
landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, 
took the same. Our meal was quite a 
banquet by comparison. We had some 
beef-steak, not so tender as it might have 
been, some of the potatoes, some cheese, 
an extra glass of the swipes, and white 
sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman — I 



Pont'Sur-Sambre 53 

beg your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. 
It had not before occurred to me that a 
pedlar was a great man in a labourer's ale- 
house ; but now that I had to enact the 
part for an evening, I found that so it was. 
He has in his hedge quarters, somewhat 
the same pre-eminency as the man who 
takes a private parlour in a hotel. The 
more you look into it, the more infinite are 
the class distinctions among men ; and pos- 
sibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no 
one at all at the bottom of the scale ; no 
one but can find some superiority over 
somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. 
We were displeased enough with our 
fare. Particularly the Cigarette ; for I 
tried to make believe that I was amused 
with the adventure, tough beef-steak and 
all. According to the Liicretian maxim, 
our steak should have been flavoured by 
the look of the other people's bread-berry. 
But we did not find it so in practice. You 
may have a head knowledge that other 
people live more poorly than yourself, but 
it is not agreeable — I was going to say, it 



54 An Inland Voyage 

is against the etiquette of the universe — to 
sit at the same table and pick your own 
superior diet from among their crusts. I 
had not seen such a thing done since the 
greedy boy at school with his birthday cake. 
It was odious enough to witness, I could 
remember ; and I had never thought to 
play the part myself. But there again you 
see what it is to be a pedlar. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes 
in our country are much more charitably 
disposed than their superiors in wealth. 
And I fancy it must arise a great deal from 
the comparative indistinction of the easy 
and the not so easy in these ranks. A work- 
man or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off 
from his less comfortable neighbours. If 
he treats himself to a luxury, he must do it 
in the face of a dozen who cannot. And 
what should more directly lead to chari- 
table thoughts ? . . . Thus the poor 
man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, 
and knows that every mouthful he puts in 
his belly has been wrenched out of the 
fingers of the hungry. 



Pont'Sur-Sambre 55 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as 
in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person 
passes through a zone of clouds, and sub- 
lunary matters are thenceforward hidden 
from his view. He sees nothing but the 
heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and 
positively as good as new. He finds him- 
self surrounded in the most touching man- 
ner by the attentions of Providence, and 
compares himself involuntarily with the 
lilies and the skylarks. He does not pre- 
cisely sing, of course ; but then he looks so 
unassuming in his open Landau / If all 
the world dined at one table, this philos- 
ophy would meet with some rude knocks. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT 

T IKE the lackeys in Holier e^s farce, when 
the true nobleman broke in on their 
high life below stairs, we were destined to 
be confronted with a real pedlar. To make 
the lesson still more poignant for fallen 
gentlemen like us, he was a pedlar of infin- 
itely more consideration than the sort of 
scurvy fellows we were taken for: like a 
lion among mice, or a ship of war bearing 
down upon two cock-boats. Indeed, he 
did not deserve the name of pedlar at all : 
he was a travelling merchant. 

I suppose it was about half-past eight 
when this worthy, Monsieur Hector Gilliard 
of Maiibeuge, turned up at the ale-house 
door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and 
cried cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a 
lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with 



Pont'Sur-Sambre 57 

something the look of an actor, and some- 
thing the look of a horse jockey. He had 
evidently prospered without any of the 
favours of education ; for he adhered with 
stern simplicity to the masculine gender, 
and in the course of the evening passed off 
some fancy futures in a very florid style of 
architecture. With him came his wife, a 
comely young woman with her hair tied in 
a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little 
fellow of four, in a blouse and military k^pi. 
It was notable that the child was many 
degrees better dressed than either of the 
parents. We were informed he was already 
at a boarding school ; but the holidays 
having just commenced, he was off to 
spend them with his parents on a cruise. 
An enchanting holiday occupation, was it 
not? to travel all day with father and 
mother in the tilt cart full of countless 
treasures ; the green country rattling by on 
either side, and the children in all the 
villages contemplating him with envy and 
wonder? It is better fun, during the holi- 
days, to be the son of a travelling mer- 



58 An Inland Voyage 

chant, than son and heir to the greatest 
cotton spinner in creation. And as for 
being a reigning prince — indeed I never 
saw one if it was not Master Gilliard ! 

While M. Hector and the son of the 
house were putting up the donkey, and get- 
ting all the valuables under lock and key, 
the landlady warmed up the remains of our 
beef-steak, and fried the cold potatoes in 
slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to 
waken the boy, who had come far that day, 
and was peevish and dazzled by the light. 
He was no sooner awake than he began to 
prepare himself for supper by eating ga- 
lette, unripe pears and cold potatoes — with, 
so far as I could judge, positive benefit to 
his appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emula- 
tion, awoke her own little girl ; and the two 
children were confronted. Master Gilliard 
looked at her for a moment, very much as 
a dog looks at his own reflection in a mir- 
ror before he turns away. He was at that 
time absorbed in the galette. His mother 
seemed crestfallen that he should display 



Pont-sur-Sambre 59 

so little inclination towards the other sex ; 
and expressed her disappointment with 
some candour and a very proper reference 
to the influence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he 
will pay more attention to the girls, and 
think a great deal less of his mother: let us 
hope she will like it as well as she seemed 
to fancy. But it is odd enough ; the very 
women who profess most contempt for 
mankind as a sex, seem to find even its 
ugliest particulars rather lively and high- 
minded in their own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with 
more interest, probably because she was in 
her own house, while he was a traveller and 
accustomed to strange sights. And besides 
there was no galette in the case with her. 

All the time of supper, there was noth- 
ing spoken of but my young lord. The 
two parents were both absurdly fond of 
their child. Monsieur kept insisting on his 
sagacity : how he knew all the children at 
school by name ; and when this utterly 
failed on trial, how he was cautious and 



<3o An Inland Voyage 

exact to a strange degree, and if asked any- 
thing, he would sit and think — and think, 
and if he did not know it, '' my faith, he 
wouldn't tell you at all — ma foi, il ne vous 
le dira pas^ Which is certainly a very 
high degree of caution. At intervals, M. 
Hector would appeal to his wife, with his 
mouth full of beef-steak, as to the little fel- 
low's age at such or such a time when he 
had said or done something memorable ; 
and I noticed that Madame usually pooh- 
poohed these inquiries. She herself was 
not boastful in her vein ; but she never had 
her fill of caressing the child ; and she 
seemed to take a gentle pleasure in recall- 
ing all that was fortunate in his little exist- 
ence. No schoolboy could have talked 
more of the holidays which were just begin- 
ning and less of the black schooltime which 
must inevitably follow after. She showed, 
with a pride perhaps partly mercantile in 
origin, his pockets preposterously swollen 
with tops and whistles and string. When 
she called at a house in the way of busi- 
ness, it appeared he kept her company ; 



Pont-stir-Sainbre 6i 

and whenever a sale was made, received a 
sou out of the profit. Indeed they spoiled 
him vastly, these two good people. But 
they had an eye to his manners for all that, 
and reproved him for some little faults in 
breeding, which occurred from time to time 
during supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at 
being taken for a pedlar. I might think 
that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my 
mistakes in French belonged to a different 
order ; but it was plain that these distinc- 
tions would be thrown away upon the land- 
lady and the two labourers. In all essential 
things, we and the Gilliards cut very much 
the same figure in the ale-house kitchen. 
M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and 
took a higher tone with the world ; but 
that was explicable on the ground of his 
driving a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies 
tramped afoot. I daresay, the rest of the 
company thought us dying with envy, 
though in no ill-sense, to be as far up in 
the profession as the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure : that every- 



62 An Inland Voyage 

one thawed and became more humanized 
and conversible as soon as these innocent 
people appeared upon the scene. I would 
not very readily trust the travelling mer- 
chant with any extravagant sum of money; 
but I am sure his heart was in the right 
place. In this mixed world, if you can find 
one or two sensible places in a man, above 
all, if you should find a whole family liv- 
ing together on such pleasant terms you 
may surely be satisfied, and take the 
rest for granted ; or, what is a great deal 
better, boldly make up your mind that 
you can do perfectly well without the 
rest ; and that ten thousand bad traits 
cannot make a single good one any the 
less good. 

It was getting late. M. Hector lit a 
stable lantern and went off to his cart for 
some arrangements ; and my young gentle- 
man proceeded to divest himself of the 
better part of his raiment, and play gym- 
nastics on his mother's lap, and thence 
on to the floor, with accompaniment of 
laughter. 



Pont'Sur-Sambre 63 

" Are you going to sleep alone ? " asked 
the servant lass. 

"There's little fear of that," says Master 
Gilliard. 

*'You sleep alone at school," objected 
his mother. *' Come, come, you must be 
a man." 

But he protested that school was a dif- 
ferent matter from the holidays ; that there 
were dormitories at school; and silenced 
the discussion with kisses : his mother 
smiling, no one better pleased than she. 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very 
little fear that he should sleep alone ; for 
there was but one bed for the trio. We, 
on our part, had firmly protested against 
one man's accommodation for two ; and 
we had a double-bedded pen in the loft 
of the house, furnished, beside the beds, 
with exactly three hat pegs and one table. 
There was not so much as a glass of water. 
But the window would open, by good for- 
tune. 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft 
was full of the sound of mighty snoring : 



64 An Inland Voyage 

the Gilliards, and the labourers, and the 
people of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with 
one consent. The young moon outside 
shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, 
and down upon the ale-house where all we 
pedlars were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED 
TO LANDRECIES 

TN the morning, when we came down- 
stairs, the landlady pointed out to us 
two pails of water behind the street-door. 
" Voiia de Peau pour vous debarbouiller!' 
says she. And so there we made a shift 
to wash ourselves, while Madame Gilliard 
brushed the family boots on the outer 
doorstep, and M. Hector^ whistling cheerily, 
arranged some small goods for the day's 
campaign in a portable chest of drawers, 
which formed a part of his baggage. Mean- 
while the child was letting off Waterloo 
crackers all over the floor. 

I wonder by-the-by, what they call 
Waterloo crackers in France ; perhaps Aus- 
terlitz crackers. There is a great deal in 
the point of view. Do you remember the 
Frenchman who, travelling by way of South- 



66 An Inland Voyage 

ampton, was put down in Waterloo Station, 
and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge? 
He had a mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it 
is ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry 
land, it is six weary kilometres by water. 
We left our bags at the inn, and walked to 
our canoes through the wet orchards unen- 
cumbered. Some of the children were 
there to see us off, but we were no longer 
the mysterious beings of the night before. 
A d^.payture is much less romantic than an 
unexplained arrival in the golden evening. 
Although we might be greatly taken at a 
ghost's first appearance, we should behold 
him vanish with comparative equanimity. 

The good folk of the inn at Pont, when 
we called there for the bags, were overcome 
with marvelling. At sight of these two 
dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union 
Jack on each, and all the varnish shining 
from the sponge, they began to perceive 
that they had entertained angels unawares. 
The landlady stood upon the bridge, prob- 
ably lamenting she had charged so little ; 



On the Sambre Canalised ^7 

the son ran to and fro, and called out the 
neighbours to enjoy the sight ; and we 
paddled away from quite a crowd of wrapt 
observers. These gentlemen pedlars, in- 
deed ! Now you see their quality too late. 
The whole day was showery, with occa- 
sional drenching plumps. We were soaked 
to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, 
then soaked once more. But there were 
some calm intervals, and one notably, when 
we were skirting the forest of Mormalj a 
sinister name to the ear, but a place most 
gratifying to sight and smell. It looked 
solemn along the river side, drooping its 
boughs into the water, and pihng them up 
aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a for- 
est but a city of nature's own, full of hardy 
and innocuous living things, where there is 
nothing dead and nothing made with the 
hands, but the citizens themselves are the 
houses and public monuments ? There is 
nothing so much alive, and yet so quiet, as 
a woodland ; and a pair of people, swinging 
past in canoes, feel very small and bustling 
by comparison. 



68 An Inland Voyage 

And surely of all smells in the world, the 
smell of many trees is the sweetest and 
most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pis- 
tolling sort of odour, that takes you in the 
nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine 
sentiment of open water and tall ships ; but 
the smell of a forest, which comes nearest 
to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by 
many degrees in the quality of softness. 
Again, the smell of the sea has little vari- 
ety, but the smell of a forest is infinitely 
changeful ; it varies with the hour of the 
day not in strength merely, but in charac- 
ter ; and the different sorts of trees, as you 
go from one zone of the wood to another, 
seem to live among different kinds of at- 
mosphere. Usually the resin of the fir pre- 
dominates. But some woods are more 
coquettish in their habits ; and the breath 
of the forest of Mormal, as it came aboard 
upon us that showery afternoon, was per- 
fumed with nothing less delicate than 
sweetbriar. 

I wish our way had always lain among 
woods. Trees are the most civil society. 



On the Sambre Canalised 69 

An old oak that has been growing where 
he stands since before the Reformation, 
taller than many spires, more stately than 
the greater part of mountains, and yet a 
living thing, liable to sicknesses and death, 
like you and mc : is not that in itself a 
speaking lesson in history? But acres on 
acres full of such patriarchs contiguously 
rooted, their green tops billowing in the 
wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up 
about their knees : a whole forest, healthy 
and beautiful, giving colour to the light, 
giving perfume to the air : what is this but 
the most imposing piece in nature's reper- 
tory? Heine wished to lie like Merlin 
under the oaks of Broceliande. I should 
not be satisfied with one tree ; but if the 
wood grew together like a banyan grove, I 
would be buried under the tap-root of the 
whole ; my parts should circulate from oak 
to oak ; and my consciousness should be 
diffused abroad in all the forest, and give 
a common heart to that assembly of green 
spires, so that it also might rejoice in its 
own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel 



70 An Inland Voyage 

a thousand squirrels leaping from bough to 
bough in my vast mausoleum ; and the 
birds and the winds merrily coursing over 
its uneven, leafy surface. 

Alas ! the forest of Mormal is only a 
little bit of a wood, and it was but for a 
little way that we skirted by its boundaries. 
And the rest of the time the rain kept 
coming in squirts and the wind in squalls, 
until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, 
scolding weather. It was odd how the 
showers began when we had to carry the 
boats over a lock, and must expose our 
legs. They always did. This is a sort of 
thing that readily begets a personal feel- 
ing against nature. There seems no reason 
why the shower should not come five min- 
utes before or five minutes after, unless 
you suppose an intention to affront you. 
The Cigarette had a mackintosh which put 
him more or less above these contrarieties. 
But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. I 
began to remember that nature was a 
woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, 
listened with great satisfaction to my Jer- 



On the Sambre Canalised 71 

emiads, and ironically concurred. He in- 
stanced, as a cognate matter, the action of 
the tides, " Which," said he, " was alto- 
gether designed for the confusion of canoe- 
ists, except in so far as it was calculated to 
minister to a barren vanity on the part of 
the moon." 

At the last lock, some little way out of 
Landrecies, I refused to go any further ; 
and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the 
bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious 
old man, whom I take to have been the 
devil, drew near and questioned me about 
our journey. In the fulness of my heart, 
I laid bare our plans before him. He said, 
it was the silliest enterprise that ever he 
heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked 
me, that it was nothing but locks, locks, 
locks, the whole way ? not to mention that, 
at this season of the year, we should find 
the Oise quite dry ? " Get into a train, my 
little young man," said he, " and go you 
away home to your parents." I was so 
astounded at the man's malice, that I could 
only stare at him in silence. A tree would 



72 An Inland Voyage 

never have spoken to me like this. At last, 
I got out with some words. We had come 
from Antwerp already, I told him, which 
was a good long way ; and we should do 
the rest in spite of him. Yes, I said, if 
there were no other reason, I would do it 
now, just because he had dared to say we 
could not. The pleasant old gentleman 
looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion 
to my canoe, and marched off, waggling his 
head. 

I was still inwardly fuming, when up 
came a pair of young fellows, who imagined 
I was the Cigarette' s servant, on a compari- 
son, I suppose, of my bare jersey with the 
other's mackintosh, and asked me many 
questions about my place and my master's 
character. I said he was a good enough 
fellow, but had this absurd voyage on the 
head. " O no, no," said one, "you must 
not say that ; it is not absurd ; it is very 
courageous of him." I believe these were 
a couple of angels sent to give me heart 
again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce 
all the old man's insinuations, as if they 



On the Sambre Canalised 73 

were original to me in my character of 
a malcontent footman, and have them 
brushed away like so many flies by these 
admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the Cig- 
arette, " they must have a curious idea of 
how English servants behave," says he, 
dryly, " for you treated me like a brute 
beast at the lock." 

I was a good deal mortified ; but my 
temper had suffered, it is a fact. 



AT LANDRECIES 

A T Landrecies the rain still fell and the 
wind still blew ; but we found a dou- 
ble-bedded room with plenty of furniture, 
real water-jugs with real water in them, and 
dinner : a real dinner, not innocent of real 
wine. After having been a pedlar for one 
night, and a butt for the elements during 
the whole of the next day, these comfort- 
able circumstances fell on my heart like 
sunshine. There was an English fruiterer 
at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruit- 
erer ; in the evening at the caf^y we watched 
our compatriot drop a good deal of money 
at corks ; and I don't know why, but this 
pleased us. 

It turned out we were to see more of 
Landrecies than we expected ; for the 
weather next day was simply bedlamite. 
It is not the place one would have chosen 
for a day's rest ; for it consists almost en- 



At Landrecies 75 

tirely of fortifications. Within the ram- 
parts, a few blocks of houses, a long row of 
barracks, and a church, figure, with what 
countenance they may, as the town. There 
seems to be no trade ; and a shopkeeper 
from whom I bought a sixpenny flint and 
steel, was so much affected, that he filled 
my pockets with spare flints into the bar- 
gain. The only public buildings that had 
any interest for us, were the hotel and the 
cafe. But we visited the church. There lies 
Marshal Clarke. But as neither of us had 
ever heard of that military hero, we bore 
the associations of the spot with fortitude. 
In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and 
reveilles, and such like, make a fine roman- 
tic interlude in -civic business. Bugles, and 
drums, and fifcs, are of themselves most 
excellent thi^igs in nature ; and when they 
carry the mind to marching armies, and the 
picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir 
up something proud in the heart. But in 
a shadow of a town like Landrecies^ with 
little else moving, these points of war made 
a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they 



7^ An Inland Voyage 

were the only things to remember. It was 
just the place to hear the round going by 
at night in the darkness, with the solid 
tramp of men marching, and the startling 
reverberations of the drum. It reminded 
you, that even this place was a point in 
the great warfaring system of Europe, and 
might on some future day be ringed about 
with cannon smoke and thunder, and 
make itself a name among strong towns. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial 
voice and notable physiological effect, nay 
even from its cumbrous and comical shape, 
stands alone among the instruments of 
noise. And if it be true, as I have heard 
it said, that drums are covered with asses' 
skin, what a picturesque irony is there in 
that ! As if this long-suffering animal's 
hide had not been sufficiently belaboured 
during life, now by Lyonnese costermon- 
gers, now by presumptuous Hebrew proph- 
ets, it must be stripped from his poor 
hinder quarters after death, stretched on a 
drum, and beaten night after night round 
the streets of every garrison town in Eu- 



At Landrecies 77 

rope. And up the heights of Alma and 
Spicheren, and wherever death has his red 
flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent 
tuck upon the cannons, there also must the 
drummer boy, hurrying with white face 
over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul 
this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable 
donkeys. 

Generally a man is never more uselessly 
employed than when he is at this trick of 
bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what 
effect it has in life, and how your dull ass 
will not mend his pace with beating. But 
in this state of mummy and melancholy 
survival of itself, when the hollow skin re- 
verberates to the drummer's wrist, and 
each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's 
heart, and puts madness there, and that 
disposition of the pulses which we, in our 
big way of talking, nickname Heroism : — is 
there not something in the nature of a re- 
venge upon the donkey's persecutors? Of 
old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill 
and down dale, and I must endure ; but 
now that I am dead, those dull thwacks 



7^ An Inland Voyage 

that were scarcely audible in country lanes, 
have become stirring music in front of the 
brigade ; and for every blow that you lay 
on my old great coat, you will see a com- 
rade stumble and fall. 

Not long after the drums had passed the 
caf^y the Cigarette and the Arethusa began 
to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel 
which was only a door or two away. But 
although we had been somewhat indifferent 
to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been in- 
different to us. All day, we learned, peo- 
ple had been running out between the 
squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds 
of persons, so said report, although it fitted 
ill with our idea of the town — hundreds of 
persons had inspected them where they lay 
in a coal-shed. We were becoming lions in 
Landrecies, who had been only pedlars the 
night before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the caf^, we were 
pursued and overtaken at the hotel door, by 
no less a person than the Juge de Paix : a 
functionary, as far as I can make out, of the 
character of a Scotch Sheriff Stibstitute, 



At La7idrecies 79 

He gave us his card and invited us to sup 
with him on the spot, very neatly, very 
gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these 
things. It was for the credit of Landrecies, 
said he ; and although we knew very well 
how little credit we could do the place, we 
must have been churlish fellows to refuse 
an invitation so politely introduced. 

The house of the Judge was close by ; it 
was a well-appointed bachelor's establish- 
ment with a curious collection of old brass 
warming-pans upon the walls. Some of 
these were most elaborately carved. It 
seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. 
You could not help thinking how many 
night-caps had wagged over these warming- 
pans in past generations ; what jests may 
have been made, and kisses taken, while 
they were in service ; and how often they 
had been uselessly paraded in the bed of 
death. If they could only speak, at what 
absurd, indecorous and tragical scenes, had 
they not been present ! 

The wine was excellent. When we made 
the Judge our compliments upon a bottle, 



8o An Inland Voyage 

" I do not give it you as my worst," said 
he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn 
these hospitable graces. They are worth 
learning ; they set off life, and make ordi- 
nary moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses pres- 
ent. One was the collector of something 
or other, I forget what ; the other, we were 
told, was the principal notary of the place. 
So it happened that we all five more or less 
followed the law. At this rate, the talk was 
pretty certain to become technical. The 
Cigarette expounded the poor laws very 
magisterially. And a little later I found 
myself laying down the Scotch Law of Ille- 
gitimacy, of which I am glad to say I know 
nothing. The collector and the notary, who 
were both married men, accused the Judge, 
who was a bachelor, of having started the 
subject. He deprecated the charge, with a 
conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I 
have ever seen, be they French or English. 
How strange that we should all, in our un- 
guarded moments, rather like to be thought 
a bit of a rogue with the women ! 



At Landrecies 8i 

As the evening went on, the wine grew 
more to my taste ; the spirits proved 
better than the wine ; the company was 
genial. This was the highest water mark 
of popular favour on the whole cruise. 
After all, being in a Judge's house, was 
there not something semi-official in the 
tribute ? And so, remembering what a 
great country France is, we did full justice 
to our entertainment. Landrecies had been 
a long while asleep before we returned to 
the hotel ; and the sentries on the ram- 
parts were already looking for daybreak. 

6 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
CANAL BOATS 

IVTEXT day we made a late start in the 
rain. The Judge politely escorted us 
to the end of the lock under an umbrella. 
We had now brought ourselves to a pitch 
of humility in the matter of weather, not 
often attained except in the Scotch High- 
lands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of 
sunshine set our hearts singing ; and when 
the rain was not heavy, we counted the day 
almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another 
along the canal ; many of them looking 
mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin 
of Archangel tar picked out with white 
and green. Some carried gay iron railings, 
and quite a parterre of flowerpots. Chil- 
dren played on the decks, as heedless of 
the rain as if they had been brought up 



The Sambre and Oise Canal 83 

on Loch Garron side ; men fished over the 
gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; 
women did their washing ; and every barge 
boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch- 
dog. Each one barked furiously at the 
canoes, running alongside until he had got 
to the end of his own ship, and so passing 
on the word to the dog aboard the next. 
We must have seen something like a hun- 
dred of these embarkations in the course 
of that day's paddle, ranged one after 
another like the houses in a street ; and 
from not one of them were we disappointed 
of this accompaniment. It was like visit- 
ing a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked. 

These little cities by the canal side had 
a very odd effect upon the mind. They 
seemed, with their flowerpots and smoking 
chimneys, their washings and dinners, a 
rooted piece of nature in the scene ; and yet 
if only the canal below were to open, one 
junk after another would hoist sail or har- 
ness horses and swim away into all parts of 
Fra7ice ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
separate, house by house, to the four winds. 



84 An Inland Voyage 

The children who played together to-day 
by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his 
own father's threshold, when and where 
might they next meet ? 

For some time past the subject of barges 
had occupied a great deal of our talk, and 
we had projected an old age on the canals 
of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely 
of progresses, now on a swift river at the 
tail of a steam-boat, now waiting horses 
for days together on some inconsiderable 
junction. We should be seen pottering on 
deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
beards falling into our laps. We were ever 
to be busied among paintpots ; so that 
there should be no white fresher, and no 
green more emerald than ours, in all the 
navy of the canals. There should be books 
in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and some 
old Burgundy as red as a November sunset 
and as odorous as a violet in April. There 
should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette^ 
with cunning touch, should draw melting 
music under the stars ; or perhaps, laying 
that aside, upraise his voice — somewhat 



The Smnbre and Oise Canal 85 

thinner than of yore, and with here and 
there a quaver, or call it a natural grace 
note — in rich and solemn psalmody. 

All this simmering in my mind, set me 
wishing to go aboard one of these ideal 
houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose 
from, as I coasted one after another, and 
the dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At 
last I saw a nice old man and his wife look- 
ing at me with some interest, so I gave 
them good day and pulled up alongside. I 
began with a remark upon their dog, which 
had somewhat the look of a pointer ; thence 
I slid into a compliment on Madame's 
flowers, and thence into a word in praise of 
their way of life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment 
in England you would get a slap in the 
face at once. The life would be shown to 
be a vile one, not without a side shot at 
your better fortune. Now, what I like so 
much in France is the clear unflinching 
recognition by everybody of his own luck. 
They all know on which side their bread is 
buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it 



86 An Inland Voyage 

to others, which is surely the better part of 
religion. And they scorn to make a poor 
mouth over their poverty, which I take to 
be the better part of manliness. I have 
heard a woman in quite a better position 
at home, with a good bit of money in hand, 
refer to her own child with a horrid whine 
as "a poor man's child." I would not say 
such a thing to the Duke of Westminster. 
And the French are full of this spirit of 
independence. Perhaps it is the result of 
republican institutions, as they call them. 
Much more likely it is because there are so 
few people really poor, that the whiners 
are not enough to keep each other in coun- 
tenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted 
to hear that I admired their state. They 
understood perfectly well, they told me, 
how Monsieur envied them. Without 
doubt Monsieur was rich ; and in that case 
he might make a canal-boat as pretty as a 
\\^2i—joli comrne un chateau. And with 
that they invited me on board their own 
water villa. They apologised for their 



The Sambre and Oise Canal 87 

cabin ; they had not been rich enough to 
make it as it ought to be. 

** The fire should have been here, at this 
side," explained the husband. "Then one 
might have a writing-table in the middle — 
books — and " (comprehensively) " all. It 
would be quite coquettish — qa serait touta- 
fait coquet^ And he looked about him as 
though the improvements were already 
made. It was plainly not the first time 
that he had thus beautified his cabin in 
imagination ; and when next he makes a 
hit, I should expect to see the writing-table 
in the middle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. 
They were no great thing, she explained. 
Fine birds were so dear. They had sought 
to get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen 
{Roue7t ? thought I ; and is this whole 
mansion, with its dogs and birds and 
smoking chimneys, so far a traveller as 
that? and as homely an object among the 
cliffs and orchards of the Seine as on the 
green plains of Sambre f) — they had sought 
to get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen ; 



88 An Inland Voyage 

but these cost fifteen francs a-piece — pict- 
ure it — fifteen francs ! 

*' Pour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a 
little bird," added the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologet- 
ics died away, and the good people began 
to brag of their barge, and their happy con- 
dition in life, as if they had been Emperor 
and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the 
Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put me 
in good humour with the world. If people 
knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear 
a man boasting, so long as he boasts of 
what he really has, I believe they would do 
it more freely and with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. 
You should have seen how they sympa- 
thised. They seemed half ready to give 
up their barge and follow us. But these 
canaletti are only gipsies semi-domesti- 
cated. The semi-domestication came out 
in rather a pretty form. Suddenly Ma- 
dame's brow darkened. *' Cependant^' she 
began, and then stopped ; and then began 
again by asking me if I were single ? 



The Sambre and Oise Canal 89 

**Yes," said I. 

" And your friend who went by just 
now?" 

He also was unmarried. 

O then — all was well. She could not 
have wives left alone at home ; but since 
there were no wives in the question, we 
were doing the best we could. 

" To see about one in the world/' said 
the husband, "■ il ny a que qa — there is 
nothing else worth while. A man, look 
you, who sticks in his own village like a 
bear," he went on, " — very well, he sees 
nothing. And then death is the end of all. 
And he has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an 
Englishman who had come up this canal 
in a steamer. 

"Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,*' I 
suggested. 

" That's it," assented the husband. 
" He had his wife and family with him, 
and servants. He came ashore at all the 
locks and asked the name of the villages, 
whether from boatmen or lock-keepers ; 



90 An Inland Voyage 

and then he wrote, wrote them down. O 
he wrote enormously ! I suppose it was a 
wager." 

A wager was a common enough explana- 
tion for our own exploits, but it seemed 
an original reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 

OEFORE nine next morning the two 
canoes were installed on a light country 
cart at Etreiix : and we were soon follow- 
ing them along the side of a pleasant val- 
ley full of hop-gardens and poplars. Agree- 
able villages lay here and there on the slope 
of the hill ; notably, Tupigny, with the hop- 
poles hanging their garlands in the very 
street, and the houses clustered with grapes. 
There was a faint enthusiasm on our pass- 
age ; weavers put their heads to the win- 
dows ; children cried out in ecstasy at sight 
of the two " boaties " — barquettes : and 
bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted 
with our charioteer, jested with him on the 
nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and 
flying. The air was clean and sweet among 
all these green fields and green things grow- 
ing. There was not a touch of autumn in 



92 An Inland Voyage 

the weather. And when, at Vadencourt, we 
launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, 
the sun broke forth and set all the leaves 
shining in the valley of the Oise. 

The river was swollen with the long 
rains. From Vadencourt all the way to 
Origny^ it ran with ever quickening speed, 
taking fresh heart at each mile, and racing 
as though it already smelt the sea. The 
water was yellow and turbulent, swung 
with an angry eddy among half-submerged 
willows, and made an angry clatter along 
stony shores. The course kept turning 
and turning in a narrow and well-timbered 
valley. Now, the river would approach the 
side, and run griding along the chalky base 
of the hill, and show us a few open colza 
fields among the trees. Now, it would 
skirt the garden-walls of houses, where 
we might catch a glimpse through a door- 
way, and see a priest pacing in the che- 
quered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed 
so thickly in front, that there seemed to be 
no issue; only a thicket of willows, over- 
topped by elms and poplars, under which 



The Olse m Flood 93 

the river ran flush and fleet, and where a 
kingfisher flew past Hke a piece of the blue 
sky. On these different manifestations, 
the sun poured its clear and catholic looks. 
The shadows lay as solid on the swift 
surface of the stream as on the stable 
meadows. The light sparkled golden in 
the dancing poplar leaves, and brought 
the hills into communion with our eyes. 
And all the while the river never stopped 
running or took breath ; and the reeds 
along the whole valley stood shivering 
from top to toe. 

There should be some myth (but if there 
is, I know it not) founded on the shivering 
of the reeds. There are not many things 
in nature more striking to man's eye. It is 
such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and 
to see such a number of terrified creatures 
taking sanctuary in every nook along the 
shore, is enough to infect a silly human 
with alarm. Perhaps they are only a-cold, 
and no wonder, standing waist deep in the 
stream. Or perhaps they have never got 
accustomed to the speed and fury of the 



94 An Inla7td Voyage 

river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous 
body. Pan once played upon their fore- 
fathers ; and so, by the hands of his river, 
he still plays upon these later generations 
down all the valley of the Oise ; and plays 
the same air, both sweet and shrill, to tell 
us of the beauty and the terror of the 
world. 

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. 
It took it up and shook it, and carried it 
masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying 
off a nymph. To keep some command on 
our direction, required hard and diligent 
plying of the paddle. The river was in 
such a hurry for the sea ! Every drop of 
water ran in a panic, like as many people in 
a frightened crowd. But what crowd was 
ever so numerous, or so single-minded? 
All the objects of sight went by at a dance 
measure; the eyesight raced with the rac- 
ing river ; the exigencies of every moment 
kept the pegs screwed so tight, that our be- 
ing quivered like a well-tuned instrument ; 
and the blood shook off its lethargy, and 
trotted through all the highways and bye- 



The Oise in Flood 95 

ways of the veins and arteries, and in 
and out of the heart, as if circulation 
were but a holiday journey, and not the 
daily moil of three score years and ten. 
The reeds might nod their heads in warn- 
ing, and with tremulous gestures, tell 
how the river was as cruel as it was strong 
and cold, and how death lurked in the eddy 
underneath the willows. But the reeds had 
to stand where they were ; and those who 
stand still are always timid advisers. As 
for us, we could have shouted aloud. If 
this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, 
a thing of death's contrivance, the old 
ashen rogue had famously outwitted him- 
self with us. I was living three to the 
minute. I was scoring points against him 
every stroke of my paddle, every turn of 
the stream. I have rarely had better profit 
of my life. 

For I think we may look upon our little 
private war with death somewhat in this 
light. If a man knows he will sooner or 
later be robbed upon a journey, he will 
have a bottle of the best in every inn, and 



9^ An Inland Voyage 

look upon all his extravagances as so much 
gained upon the thieves. And above all, 
where instead of simply spending, he makes 
a profitable investment for some of his 
money, when it will be out of risk of loss. 
So every bit of brisk living, and above all 
when it is healthful, is just so much gained 
upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall 
have the less in our pockets, the more in 
our stomach, when he cries stand and de- 
liver. A swift stream is a favourite artifice 
of his, and one that brings him in a com- 
fortable thing per annum ; but when he 
and I come to settle our accounts, I shall 
whistle in his face for these hours upon the 
upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken 
with the sunshine and exhilaration of the 
pace. We could no longer contain our- 
selves and our content. The canoes were 
too small for us ; we must be out and 
stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a 
green meadow we bestowed our limbs on 
the grass, and smoked deifying tobacco and 
proclaimed the world excellent. It was the 



The Oise i7i Flood 97 

last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon 
it with extreme complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the 
chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman 
with his team appeared and disappeared at 
regular intervals. At each revelation he 
stood still for a few seconds against the 
sky : for all the world (as the Cigarette 
declared) like a toy Burns who had just 
ploughed up the Motmtahi Daisy. He was 
the only living thing within view, unless 
we are to count the river. 

On the other side of the valley a group 
of red roofs and a belfry showed among the 
foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer 
made the afternoon musical on a chime of 
bells. There was something very sweet 
and taking in the air he played ; and we 
thought we had never heard bells speak so 
intelligibly, or sing so melodiously, as these. 
It must have been to some such measure 
that the spinners and the young maids 
sang, *' Come away. Death," in the Shakes- 
pearian Illyria. There is so often a threat- 
ening note, something blatant and metallic, 
7 



9^ An Ltland Voyage 

in the voice of bells, that I believe we have 
fully more pain than pleasure from hearing 
them ; but these, as they sounded abroad, 
now high, now low, now with a plaintive 
cadence that caught the ear like the bur- 
then of a popular song, were always moder- 
ate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with 
the spirit of still, rustic places, like the 
noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rook- 
ery in spring. I could have asked the bell- 
ringer for his blessing, good, sedate old 
man, who swung the rope so gently to 
the time of his meditations. I could have 
blessed the priest or the heritors, or who- 
ever may be concerned with such affairs in 
France, who had left these sweet old bells 
to gladden the afternoon, and not held 
meetings, and made collections, and had 
their names repeatedly printed in the local 
paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, 
brazen, Birmingham-h.QdiriQd substitutes, 
who should bombard their sides to the 
provocation of a brand-new bell-ringer, and 
fill the echoes of the valley with terror and 
riot. 



The Oise in Flood 99 

At last the bells ceased, and with their 
note the sun withdrew. The piece was at 
an end ; shadow and silence possessed the 
valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle 
with glad hearts, like people who have sat 
out a noble performance, and return to 
work. The river was more dangerous here ; 
it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden 
and violent. All the way down we had 
had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it 
was a weir which could be shot, sometimes 
one so shallow and full of stakes that we 
must withdraw the boats from the water 
and carry them round. But the chief sort 
of obstacle was a consequence of the late 
high winds. Every two or three hundred 
yards a tree had fallen across the river and 
usually involved more than another in its 
fall. Often there was free water at the 
end, and we could steer round the leafy 
promontory and hear the water sucking 
and bubbling among the twigs. Often, 
again, when the tree reached from bank to 
bank, there was room, by lying close, to 
shoot through underneath, canoe and all. 

LcfC. 



loo An Inland Voyage 

Sometimes it was necessary to get out 
upon the trunk itself and pull the boats 
across ; and sometimes, where the stream 
was too impetuous for this, there was noth- 
ing for it but to land and " carry over." 
This made a fine series of accidents in the 
day's career, and kept us aware of our- 
selves. 

Shortly after our reembarkation, while I 
was leading by a long way, and still full of 
a noble, exulting spirit in honour of the 
sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, 
the river made one of its leonine pounces 
round a corner, and I was aware of another 
fallen tree within a stone-cast. I had my 
backboard down in a trice, and aimed for a 
place where the trunk seemed high enough 
above the water, and the branches not too 
thick to let me slip below. When a man 
has just vowed eternal brotherhood with 
the universe, he is not in a temper to take 
great determinations coolly, and this, which 
might have been a very important deter- 
mination for me, had not been taken under 
a happy star. The tree caught me about 



The Ozse in Flood loi 

the chest, and while I was yet struggling 
to make less of myself and get through, 
the river took the matter out of my hands, 
and bereaved me of my boat. The Are- 
thusa swung round broadside on, leaned 
over, ejected so much of me as still re- 
mained on board, and thus disencumbered, 
whipped under the tree, righted, and went 
merrily away down stream. 

I do not know how long it was before I 
scrambled on to the tree to which I was 
left clinging, but it was longer than I cared 
about. My thoughts were of a grave and 
almost sombre character, but I still clung 
to my paddle. The stream ran away with 
my heels as fast as I could pull up my 
shoulders, and I seemed, by the weight, to 
have all the water of the Oise in my trouser 
pockets. You can never know, till you try 
it, what a dead pull a river makes against a 
man. Death himself had me by the heels, 
for this was his last ambuscado, and he 
must now join personally in the fray. And 
still I held to my paddle. At last I 
dragged myself on to my stomach on the 



I02 An Inland Voyage 

trunk, and lay there a breathless sop, with 
a mingled sense of humour and injustice. 
A poor figure I must have presented to 
Burns upon the hill-top with his team. 
But there was the paddle in my hand. On 
my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to 
get these words inscribed : " He clung to 
his paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past a while 
before ; for, as I might have observed, if 
I had been a little less pleased with the 
universe at the moment, there was a clear 
way round the tree-top at the farther side. 
He had offered his services to haul me out, 
but as I was then already on my elbows, I 
had declined, and sent him down stream 
after the truant Arethusa. The stream 
was too rapid for a man to mount with 
one canoe, let alone two, upon his hands. 
So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and 
proceeded down the meadows by the river 
side. I was so cold that my heart was 
sore. I had now an idea of my own, why 
the reeds so bitterly shivered. I could 
have given any of them a lesson. The 



The Oise in Flood 103 

Cigarette remarked facetiously, that he 
thought I was " taking exercise " as I drew 
near, until he made out for certain that I 
was only twittering with cold. I had a 
rub down with a towel, and donned a dry 
suit from the india-rubber bag. But I 
was not my own man again for the rest of 
the voyage. I had a queasy sense that I 
wore my last dry clothes upon my body. 
The struggle had tired me ; and perhaps, 
whether I knew it or not, I was a little 
dashed in spirit. The devouring element 
in the universe had leaped out against me, 
in this green valley quickened by a run- 
ning stream. The bells were all very 
pretty in their way, but I had heard some 
of the hollow notes of Paris music. Would 
the wicked river drag me down by the heels, 
indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? 
Nature's good-humour was only skin-deep 
after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the 
winding course of the stream, and darkness 
had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in 
Origny Saint e-Benoite, when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SAINtE-BENOtTE 
A BY-DAY 

TTHE next day was Sunday, and the 
church bells had little rest ; indeed 
I do not think I remember anywhere else 
so great a choice of services as were here 
offered to the devout. And while the 
bells made merry in the sunshine, all the 
world with his dog was out shooting among 
the beets and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife 
went down the street at a foot-pace, sing- 
ing to a very slow, lamentable music " O 
France, mes amours^ It brought every- 
body to the door ; and when our landlady 
called in the man to buy the words, he 
had not a copy of them left. She was 
not the first nor the second who had been 
taken with the song. There is something 
very pathetic in the love of the French 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 105 

people, since the war, for dismal patriotic 
music-making. I have watched a forester 
from Alsace while some one was singing 
" Les malheurs de la France,'' at a baptismal 
party in the neighbourhood of Fontaine- 
bleau. He arose from the table and took 
his son aside, close by where I was stand- 
ing. " Listen, listen," he said, bearing on 
the boy's shoulder, " and remember this, 
my son." A little after he went out into 
the garden suddenly, and I could hear him 
sobbing in the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the 
loss of Alsace and Lorraine, made a sore 
pull on the endurance of this sensitive 
people ; and their hearts are still hot, not 
so much against Germa^iy as against the 
Empire. In what other country will you 
find a patriotic ditty bring all the world 
into the street ? But affliction heightens 
love ; and we shall never know we are 
Englislunen until we have lost India. In- 
dependent America is still the cross of 
my existence ; I cannot think of Farmer 
George without abhorrence ; and I never 



io6 An Inland Voyage 

feel more warmly to my own land than 
when I see the stars and stripes, and re- 
member what our empire might have been. 
The hawker's little book, which I pur- 
chased, was a curious mixture. Side by 
side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of 
the Paris music-halls, there were many pas- 
toral pieces, not without a touch of poetry, 
I thought, and instinct with the brave in- 
dependence of the poorer class in France. 
There you might read how the wood- 
cutter gloried in his axe, and the gardener 
scorned to be ashamed of his spade. It 
was not very well written, this poetry of 
labour, but the pluck of the sentiment 
redeemed what was weak or wordy in the 
expression. The martial and the patriotic 
pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, 
womanish productions one and all. The 
poet had passed under the Catidine Forks ; 
he sang for an army visiting the tomb of 
its old renown, with arms reversed ; and 
sang not of victory, but of death. There 
was a number in the hawker's collection 
called Conscrits Franqais, which may rank 



Origny Samte-Benoite 107 

among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on 
record. It would not be possible to fight 
at all in such a spirit. The bravest con- 
script would turn pale if such a ditty were 
struck up beside him on the morning of 
battle ; and whole regiments would pile 
their arms to its tune. 

\l Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about 
the influence of national songs, you would 
say France was come to a poor pass. But 
the thing will work its own cure, and a 
sound-hearted and courageous people weary 
at length of snivelling over their disasters. 
Already Paul Dcroulede has written some 
manly military verses. There is not much 
of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to 
stir a man's heart in his bosom ; they lack 
the lyrical elation, and move slowly ; but 
they are written in a grave honourable, sto- 
ical spirit, which should carry soldiers far 
in a good cause. One feels as if one would 
like to trust Deroul^de with something. It 
will be happy if he can so far inoculate his 
fellow countrymen that they may be trusted 
with their own future. And in the mean- 



io8 An Inland Voyage 

time, here is an antidote to " French Con- 
scripts" and much other doleful versification. 

We had left the boats over-night in the 
custody of one whom we shall call Carni- 
val. I did not properly catch his name, 
and perhaps that was not unfortunate for 
him, as I am not in a position to hand him 
down with honour to posterity. To this 
person's premises we strolled in the course 
of the day, and found quite a little deputa- 
tion inspecting the canoes. There was a 
stout gentleman with a knowledge of the 
river, which he seemed eager to impart. 
There was a very elegant young gentleman 
in a black coat, with a smattering of Eng- 
lish, who led the talk at once to the Oxford 
and Cambridge Boat Race. And then there 
were three handsome girls from fifteen to 
twenty ; and an old gentleman in a blouse, 
with no teeth to speak of, and a strong 
country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, 
I should suppose. 

The Cigarette had some mysteries to per- 
form with his rigging in the coach-house ; 
so I was left to do the parade single-handed. 



Origny Sainte-BenoUe 109 

I found myself very much of a hero whether 
I would or not. The girls were full of little 
shudderings over the dangers of our jour- 
ney. And I thought it would be ungallant 
not to take my cue from the ladies. My 
mishap of yesterday, told in an off-hand 
way, produced a deep sensation. It was 
Othello over again, with no less than three 
Desdemonas and a sprinkling of sympathetic 
senators in the background. Never were 
the canoes more flattered, or flattered more 
adroitly. 

" It is like a violin," cried one of the girls 
in an ecstasy. 

" I thank you for the word, mademoi- 
selle," said I. *' All the more since there 
are people who call out to me, that it is like 
a coffin." 

" O ! but it is really like a violin. It is 
finished like a violin," she went on. 

" And polished like a violin," added a 
senator. 

'' One has only to stretch the cords," con- 
cluded another, " and then tum-tumty-tum " 
— he imitated the result with spirit. 



no An Inland Voyage 

Was not this a graceful little ovation ? 
Where this people finds the secret of its 
pretty speeches, I cannot imagine ; unless 
the secret should be no other than a sincere 
desire to please ? But then no disgrace 
is attached in France to saying a thing 
neatly ; whereas in Eiigland, to talk like 
a book is to give in one's resignation to 
society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole 
into the coach-house, and somewhat irrele- 
vantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
the father of the three girls and four more : 
quite an exploit for a Frerichman. 

"You are very fortunate," answered the 
Cigarette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having appar- 
ently gained his point, stole away again. 

We all got very friendly together. The 
girls proposed to start with us on the mor- 
row, if you please ! And jesting apart, every 
one was anxious to know the hour of our 
departure. Now, when you are going to 
crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, 
a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable ; 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 



III 



and so we told them not before twelve, 
and mentally determined to be off by ten 
at latest. 

Towards evening, we went abroad again 
to post some letters. It was cool and 
pleasant ; the long village was quite empty, 
except for one or two urchins who followed 
us as they might have followed a menag- 
erie ; the hills and the tree-tops looked in 
from all sides through the clear air; and 
the bells were chiming for yet another 
service. 

Suddenly, we sighted the three girls 
standing, with a fourth sister, in front of 
a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. 
We had been very merry with them a little 
while ago, to be sure. But what was the 
etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a coun- 
try road, of course we should have spoken 
to them; but here, under the eyes of all 
the gossips, ought we to do even as much 
as bow ? I consulted the Cigarette, 

" Look," said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on 
the same spot ; but now four backs were 



112 An Inland Voyage 

turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
Corporal Modesty had given the word of 
command, and the well-discipHned picket 
had gone right-about-face like a single per- 
son. They maintained this formation all 
the while we were in sight ; but we heard 
them tittering among themselves, and the 
girl whom we had not met, laughed with 
open mouth, and even looked over her 
shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was it 
altogether modesty after all ? or in part a 
sort of country provocation ? 

As we were returning to the inn, we be- 
held something floating in the ample field 
of golden evening sky, above the chalk 
cliffs and the trees that grow along their 
summit. It was too high up, too large and 
too steady for a kite ; and as it was dark, it 
could not be a star. For although a star 
were as black as ink and as rugged as a 
walnut, so amply does the sun bathe 
heaven with radiance, that it would sparkle 
like a point of light for us. The village 
was dotted with people with their heads in 
air ; and the children were in a bustle all 



Origny Saint e-Benoite 113 

along the street and far up the straight 
road that climbs the hill, where we could 
still see them running in loose knots. It 
was a balloon, we learned, which had left 
Saint Quentin at half-past five that even- 
ing. Mighty composedly the majority of 
the grown people took it. But we were 
English, and were soon running up the hill 
with the best. Being travellers ourselves 
in a small way, we would fain have seen 
these other travellers alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we 
gained the top of the hill. All the gold 
had withered out of the sky, and the bal- 
loon had disappeared. Whither? I ask 
myself ; caught up into the seventh heaven ? 
or come safely to land somewhere in that 
blue uneven distance, into which the road- 
way dipped and melted before our eyes ? 
Probably the aeronauts were already warm- 
ing themselves at a farm chimney, for they 
say it is cold in these unhomely regions of 
the air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside 
trees and disappointed sightseers, returning 
through the meadows, stood out in black 



114 An Inland Voyage 

against a margin of low red sunset. It was 
cheerfuller to face the other way, and so 
down the hill we went, with a full moon, 
the colour of a melon, swinging high above 
the wooded valley, and the white cliffs be- 
hind us faintly reddened by the fire of the 
chalk kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads 
were being made in Origny Saint e-Benoite 
by the river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
THE COMPANY AT TABLE 

A LTHOUGH we came late for dinner, 
the company at table treated us to 
sparkling wine. " That is how we are in 
France,'' said one. '* Those who sit down 
with us are our friends." And the rest 
applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd 
trio to pass the Sunday with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, 
both men of the north. One ruddy, and of 
a full habit of body, with copious black 
hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of 
France, who thought nothing so small, not 
even a lark or a minnow, but he might vin- 
dicate his prowess by its capture. For such 
a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing 
like Samsons, his arteries running buckets 
of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal 



ii6 An Inland Voyage 

exploits, produced a feeling of dispropor- 
tion in the world, as when a steam-hammer 
is set to cracking nuts. The other was 
a quiet, subdued person, blond and lym- 
phatic and sad, with something the look 
of a Dane : *' Tristes tetes de Danois / " as 
Gaston Lafenestre used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without 
a word for the best of all good fellows now 
gone down into the dust. We shall never 
again see Gaston in his forest costume — he 
was Gastott with all the world, in affection, 
not in disrespect — nor hear him wake the 
echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland 
horn. Never again shall his kind smile 
put peace among all races of artistic men, 
and make the Englishman at home in 
France. Never more shall the sheep, who 
were not more innocent at heart than he, 
sit all unconsciously for his industrious 
pencil. He died too early, at the very 
moment when he was beginning to put 
forth fresh sprouts, and blossom into some- 
thing worthy of himself; and yet none who 
knew him will think he lived in vain. I 



Origny Saint e-Benoite 117 

never knew a man so little, for whom yet 
I had so much affection ; and I find it a 
good test of others, how much they had 
learned to understand and value him. His 
was indeed a good influence in life while 
he was still among us ; he had a fresh 
laugh, it did you good to see him ; and 
however sad he may have been at heart, he 
always bore a bold and cheerful counte- 
nance, and took fortune's worst as it were 
the showers of spring. But now his 
mother sits alone by the side of Fontaine- 
bleau woods, where he gathered mushrooms 
in his hardy and penurious youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way 
across the channel : besides those which 
were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left 
him alone in Londo7i with two English 
pence, and perhaps twice as many words of 
English. If anyone who reads these lines 
should have a scene of sheep, in the man- 
ner of Jacques, with this fine creature's sig- 
nature, let him tell himself that one of the 
kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand 
to decorate his lodging. There may be 



ii8 An Inland Voyage 

better pictures in the National Gallery ; 
but not a painter among the generations 
had a better heart. Precious in the sight 
of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, 
is the death of his saints. It had need to 
be precious ; for it is very costly, when by 
the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the 
peacemaker, and peace-looker^ of a whole 
society is laid in the ground with CcBsar 
and the Tzvelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the 
oaks of Fojitainebleau ; and when the des- 
sert comes in at Barbizon, people look to 
the door for a figure that is gone. 

The third of our companions at Origny 
was no less a person than the landlady's 
husband: not properly the landlord, since 
he worked himself in a factory during the 
day, and came to his own house at evening 
as a guest : a man worn to skin and bone 
by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, 
sharp features, and swift, shining eyes. On 
Saturday, describing some paltry adventure 
at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a 
score of fragments. Whenever he made a 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 119 

remark, he would look all round the table, 
with his chin raised, and a spark of green 
light in either eye, seeking approval. His 
wife appeared now and again in the door- 
way of the room, where she was superin- 
tending dinner, with a ^^ Henri, ypu forget 
yourself," or a ''Henri, you can surely talk 
without making such a noise." Indeed, 
that was what the honest fellow could not 
do. On the most trifling matter, his eyes 
kindled, his fist visited the table, and his 
voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder. 
I never saw such a petard of a man ; I think 
the devil was in him. He had two favorite 
expressions : *' it is logical," or illogical as 
the case might be : and this other, thrown 
out with a certain bravado, as a man might 
unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many 
a long and sonorous story : '■'■ I am a prole- 
tarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very 
well. God forbid, that ever I should find 
him handling a gun in Paris streets. That 
will not be a good moment for the general 
public. 

I thought his two phrases very much 



I20 An Inland Voyage 

represented the good and evil of his class, 
and to some extent of his country. It is 
a strong thing to say what one is, and not 
be ashamed of it ; even although it be in 
doubtful taste to repeat the statement too 
often in one evening. I should not admire 
it in a duke, of course ; but as times go, 
the trait is honourable in a workman. On 
the other hand, it is not at all a strong 
thing to put one's reliance upon logic ; and 
our own logic particularly, for it is generally 
wrong. We never know where we are to 
end, if once we begin following words or 
doctors. There is an upright stock in a 
man's own heart, that is trustier than any 
syllogism ; and the eyes, and the sympa- 
thies and appetites, know a thing or two 
that have never yet been stated in contro- 
versy. Reasons are as plentiful as black- 
berries ; and like fisticuffs, they serve im- 
partially with all sides. Doctrines do not 
stand or fall by their proofs, and are only 
logical in so far as they are cleverly put. 
An able controversialist no more than an 
able general demonstrates the justice of his 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 121 

cause. But France is all gone wandering 
after one or two big words ; it will take 
some time before they can be satisfied that 
they are no more than words, however big ; 
and when once that is done, they will per- 
haps find logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of 
the day's shooting. When all the sportsmen 
of a village shoot over the village territory 
pro tndiviso, it is plain that many questions 
of etiquette and priority must arise. 

" Here now," cried the landlord, bran- 
dishing a plate, " here is a field of beet-root. 
Well. Here am I then. I advance, do 
I not ? Ek bien ! sacristi'' and the state- 
ment, waxing louder, rolls off into a rever- 
beration of oaths, the speaker glaring about 
for sympathy, and everybody nodding his 
head to him in the name of peace. 

The ruddy Northnayi told some tales of 
his own prowess in keeping order: notably 
one of a Marquis. 

"' Marquis," I said, '' if you take another 
step I fire upon you. You have committed 
a dirtiness, Marquis." 



122 An Inland Voyage 

Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis 
touched his cap and withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. *'It 
was well done," he said. '' He did all that 
he could. He admitted he was wrong." 
And then oath upon oath. He was no 
marquis-lover either, but he had a sense 
of justice in him, this proletarian host of 
ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk 
veered into a general comparison of Paris 
and the country. The proletarian beat 
the table like a drum in praise of Paris. 
''What is Paris? Paris is the cream of 
France. There are no Parisians : it is you 
and I and everybody who are Parisians. 
A man has eighty chances per cent, to get 
on in the world in Paris'' And he drew a 
vivid sketch of the workman in a den no 
bigger than a dog-hutch, making articles 
that were to go all over the world. " Eh 
bien, quoi^ cest magnifique, qa !'' cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of 
a peasant's life ; he thought Paris bad for 
men and women ; '' centralisation," said he — 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 123 

But the landlord was at his throat in a 
moment. It was all logical, he showed 
him ; and all magnificent. '' What a spec- 
tacle ! What a glance for an eye ! " And 
the dishes reeled upon the table under a 
cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word 
in praise of the liberty of opinion in France. 
I could hardly have shot more amiss. 
There was an instant silence, and a great 
wagging of significant heads. They did 
not fancy the subject, it was plain ; but 
they gave me to understand that the sad 
Northman was a martyr on account of his 
views. '' Ask him a bit," said they. " Just 
ask him." 

'' Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, an- 
swering me, although I had not spoken, 
" I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion 
in France than you may imagine." And 
with that he dropped his eyes, and seemed 
to consider the subject at an end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at 
this. How, or why, or when, was this lym- 
phatic bagman martyred? We concluded 



124 An Inland Voyage 

at once it was on some religious question, 
and brushed up our memories of the Inqui- 
sitio?tj which were principally drawn from 
Poes horrid story, and the sermon in Tris- 
tram Shandy, I believe. 

On the morrow we had an opportunity 
of going further into the question ; for 
when we rose very early to avoid a sympa- 
thising deputation at our departure, we 
found the hero up before us. He was 
breaking his fast on white wine and raw 
onions, in order to keep up the character 
of martyr, I conclude. We had a long con- 
versation, and made out what we wanted 
in spite of his reserve. But here was a 
truly curious circumstance. It seems pos- 
sible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman 
to discuss during a long half hour, and each 
nationality have a different idea in view 
throughout. It was not till the very end 
that we discovered his heresy had been 
political, or that he suspected our mistake. 
The terms and spirit in which he spoke of 
his political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited 
to religious beliefs. And vice versd. 



Origny Sainte-Benoite 125 

Nothing could be more characteristic of 
the two countries. Politics are the religion 
of Fra7ice ; as Nanty Ewart would have 
said, ''A d — d bad religion ; " while we, at 
home, keep most of our bitterness for little 
differences about a hymn-book, or a Hebrew 
word which, perhaps, neither of the parties 
can translate. And perhaps the miscon- 
ception is typical of many others that may 
never be cleared up : not only between 
people of different race, but between those 
of different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a 
Communist, or perhaps only a Communard, 
which is a very different thing ; and had 
lost one or more situations in consequence. 
I think he had also been rejected in mar- 
riage ; but perhaps he had a sentimental 
way of considering business which deceived 
me. He was a mild, gentle creature, any- 
way ; and I hope he has got a better situa- 
tion, and married a more suitable wife since 
then. 



DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 

/^ARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at 
first. Finding us easy in our ways, he 
regretted having let us off so cheaply ; and 
taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull 
story with the moral of another five francs 
for the narrator. The thing was palpably 
absurd ; but I paid up, and at once dropped 
all friendliness of manner, and kept him in 
his place as an inferior with freezing British 
dignity. He saw in a moment that he had 
gone too far, and killed a willing horse ; 
his face fell ; I am sure he would have re- 
funded if he could only have thought of 
a decent pretext. He wished me to drink 
with him, but I would none of his drinks. 
He grew pathetically tender in his profes- 
sions ; but I walked beside him in silence 
or answered him in stately courtesies ; and 
when we got to the landing-place, passed 
the word in English slang to the Cigarette. 



Down the Oise : to Moy 127 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown 
out the day before, there must have been 
fifty people about the bridge. We were as 
pleasant as we could be with all but Car- 
nival. We said good-bye, shaking hands 
with the old gentleman who knew the river 
and the young gentleman who had a smat- 
tering of English ; but never a word for 
Carnival, Poor Carnival, here was a hu- 
miliation. He who had been so much iden- 
tified with the canoes, who had given orders 
in our name, who had shown off the boats 
and even the boatmen like a private exhi- 
bition of his own, to be now so publicly 
shamed by the lions of his caravan ! I 
never saw anybody look more crest-fallen 
than he. He hung in the background, 
coming timidly forward ever and again as 
he thought he saw some symptom of a re- 
lenting humour, and falling hurriedly back 
when he encountered a cold stare. Let us 
hope it will be a lesson to him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnival's 
peccadillo had not the thing been so un- 
common in France. This, for instance, 



I2B An Inland Voyage 

was the only case of dishonesty or even 
sharp practice in our whole voyage. We 
talk very much about our honesty in Eng- 
land. It is a good rule to be on your guard 
wherever you hear great professions about 
a very little piece of virtue. If the Eng- 
lish could only hear how they are spoken 
of abroad, they might confine themselves 
for a while to remedying the fact ; and per- 
haps even when that was done, give us 
fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, 
were not present at our start, but when we 
got round to the second bridge, behold 
it was black with sight-seers ! We were 
loudly cheered, and for a good way below, 
young lads and lasses ran along the bank 
still cheering. What with current and pad- 
dling, we were flashing along like swallows. 
It was no joke to keep up with us upon 
the woody shore. But the girls picked up 
their skirts, as if they were sure they had 
good ankles, and followed until their 
breath was out. The last to weary were 
the three graces and a couple of compan- 



Down the Oise : to Moy 129 

ions; and just as they too had had enough, 
the foremost of the three leaped upon a 
tree stump and kissed her hand to the 
canoeists. Not Diana herself, although 
this was more of a Venus after all, could 
have done a graceful thing more grace- 
fully. " Come back again ! " she cried ; and 
all the others echoed her ; and the hills 
about Origny repeated the words, " Come 
back." But the river had us round an angle 
in a twinkling, and we were alone with 
the green trees and running water. 

Come back? There is no coming back, 
young ladies, on the impetuous stream of 
life. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by 
the clock of fate. There is a headlong, 
forthright tide, that bears away man with 
his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in 
time and space. It is full of curves like 
this, your winding river of the Oise ; and lin^ 
gers and returns in pleasant pastorals ; and 



130 An Inland Voyage 

yet, rightly thought upon, never returns at 
all. For though it should revisit the same 
acre of meadow in the same hour, it will 
have made an ample sweep between whiles ; 
many little streams will have fallen in ; 
many exhalations risen towards the sun ; 
and even although it were the same acre, 
it will no more be the same river of Oise, 
And thus, O graces of Origny, although the 
wandering fortune of my life should carry 
me back again to where you await death's 
whistle by the river, that will not be the 
old I who walks the street ; and those wives 
and mothers, say, will those be you ? 

There was never any mistake about the 
Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper 
reaches, it was still in a prodigious hurry 
for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, 
through all the windings of its channel, 
that I strained my thumb, fighting with 
the rapids, and had to paddle all the rest of 
the way with one hand turned up. Some- 
times, it had to serve mills ; and being still 
a little river, ran very dry and shallow in 
the meanwhile. We had to put our legs out 



Dozun the Oise : to Moy 131 

of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand 
of the bottom with our feet. And still it 
went on its way singing among the poplars, 
and making a green valley in the world. 
After a good woman, and a good book, and 
tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on 
earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt 
on my life ; which was after all one part 
owing to the unruly winds of heaven that 
had blown down the tree, one part to my 
own mismanagement, and only a third part 
to the river itself, and that not out of 
malice, but from its great pre-occupation 
over its business of getting to the sea. A 
difficult business, too ; for the detours it 
had to make are not to be counted. The 
geographers seem to have given up the 
attempt ; for I found no map represent the 
infinite contortion of its course. A fact 
will say more than any of them. After we 
had been some hours, three if I mistake 
not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, 
breakneck gallop, when we came upon a 
hamlet and asked where we were, we had 
got no farther than four kilometres (say 



132 An Inland Voyage 

two miles and a half) from Origny. If it 
were not for the honour of the thing (in 
the Scotch saying), we might almost as well 
have been standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a paral- 
lelogram of poplars. The leaves danced 
and prattled in the wind all round about 
us. The river hurried on meanwhile, and 
seemed to chide at our delay. Little we 
cared. The river knew where it was 
going ; not so we : the less our hurry, 
where we found good quarters and a 
pleasant theatre for a pipe. At that hour, 
stockbrokers were shouting in Paris Bourse 
for two or three per cent.; but we minded 
them as little as the sliding stream, and 
sacrificed a hecatomb of minutes to the 
gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is 
the resource of the faithless. Where a 
man can trust his own heart, and those of 
his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. 
And if he die in the meanwhile, why 
then, there he dies, and the question is 
solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the 



Down the Oise : to Moy 133 

course of the afternoon ; because, where it 
crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, 
but a siphon. If it had not been for an 
excited fellow on the bank, we should have 
paddled right into the siphon, and thence- 
forward not paddled any more. We met 
a man, a gentleman, on the tow-path, who 
was much interested in our cruise. And 
I was witness to a strange seizure of lying 
suffered by the Cigarette : \yho, because 
his knife came from Norway, narrated all 
sorts of adventures in that country, where 
he has never been. He was quite feverish 
at the end, and pleaded demoniacal pos- 
session. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant 
little village, gathered round a chdteau in a 
moat. The air was perfumed with hemp 
from neighbouring fields. At the Golden 
Sheep, we found excellent entertainment. 
German shells from the siege of La Fere, 
Nilrnberg figures, gold fish in a bowl, and 
all manner of knick-knacks, embellished 
the public room. The landlady was a 
stout, plain, short-sighted, motherly body. 



134 An Inland Voyage 

with something not far short of a genius 
for cookery. She had a guess of her excel- 
lence herself. After every dish was sent 
in, she would come and look on at the 
dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking 
eyes. ''Cest bon, nest-ce pas ? " she would 
say ; and when she had received a proper 
answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. 
That common French dish, partridge and 
cabbages, became a new thing in my eyes 
at the Golden Sheep ; and many subsequent 
dinners have bitterly disappointed me in 
consequence. Sweet was our rest in the 
Golden Sheep at Moy, 



LA F£RE of cursed MEMORY 

Xl/E lingered in Moy a good part of the 
day, for we were fond of being philo- 
sophical, and scorned long journeys and 
early starts on principle. The place, more- 
over, invited to repose. People in elab- 
orate shooting costumes sallied from the 
chdteau with guns and game-bags ; and 
this was a pleasure in itself, to remain be- 
hind while these elegant pleasure-seekers 
took the first of the morning. In this way, 
all the world may be an aristocrat, and play 
the duke among marquises, and the reign- 
ing monarch among dukes, if he will only 
outvie them in tranquillity. An imper- 
turbable demeanour comes from perfect 
patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed 
or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfor- 
tune at their own private pace, like a clock 
during a thunderstorm. 

We made a very short day of it to La 



13^ An Inland Voyage 

Fere ; but the dusk was falling, and a small 
rain had begun before we stowed the boats. 
La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and 
has two belts of rampart. Between the first 
and the second, extends a region of waste 
land and cultivated patches. Here and 
there along the wayside were posters for- 
bidding trespass in the name of military- 
engineering. At last, a second gateway ad- 
mitted us to the town itself. Lighted win- 
dows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfort- 
able cookery came abroad upon the air. 
The town was full of the military reserve, 
out for the French Autumn manoeuvres, and 
the reservists walked speedily and wore 
their formidable greatcoats. It was a fine 
night to be within doors over dinner, and 
hear the rain upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufificiently 
congratulate each other on the prospect, 
for we had been told there was a capital 
inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were 
going to eat ! such beds as we were to 
sleep in ! — and all the while the rain raining 
on houseless folk over all the poplared 



La Fere of Cursed Memory 137 

country-side! It made our mouths water. 
The inn bore the name of some wood- 
land animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget 
which. But I shall never forget how spa- 
cious and how eminently habitable it looked 
as we drew near. The carriage entry was 
lighted up, not by intention, but from the 
mere superfluity of fire and candle in the 
house. A rattle of many dishes came to 
our ears ; we sighted a great field of table- 
cloth ; the kitchen glowed like a forge and 
smelt like a garden of things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine, and physio- 
logical heart, of a hostelry, with all its 
furnaces in action, and all its dressers 
charged with viands, you are now to sup- 
pose us making our triumphal entry, a pair 
of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a 
limp india-rubber bag upon his arm. I do 
not believe I have a sound view of that 
kitchen ; I saw it through a sort of glory : 
but it seemed to me crowded with the 
snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned 
round from their saucepans and looked at 
us with surprise. There was no doubt 



13^ An I?ila7td Voyage 

about the landlady, however: there she 
was, heading her army, a flushed, angry 
woman, full of affairs. Her I asked po- 
litely — too politely, thinks the Cigarette — 
if we could have beds : she surveying us 
coldly from head to foot. 

" You will find beds in the suburb," she 
remarked. '' We are too busy for the like 
of you." 

If we could make an entrance, change 
our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I 
felt sure we could put things right ; so said 
I : ''If we cannot sleep, v/e may at least 
dine," — and was for depositing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was 
that which followed in the landlady's face ! 
She made a run at us, and stamped her 
foot. 

''Out with you — out of the door!" she 
screeched. " Sortez ! sortez I sortez par la 
porte ! " 

I do not know how it happened, but 
next moment we were out in the rain and 
darkness, and I was cursing before the 
carriage entry like a disappointed mendi- 



La Pere of Ctirsed Memory 139 

cant. Where were the boating men of 
Belgium ? where the Judge and his good 
wines? and where the graces of Origny ? 
Black, black was the night after the firelit 
kitchen ; but what was that to the black- 
ness in our heart ? This was not the first 
time that I have been refused a lodging. 
Often and often have I planned what I 
should do if such a misadventure happened 
to me again. And nothing is easier to 
plan. But to put in execution, with the 
heart boiling at the indignity? Try it; 
try it only once ; and tell me what you did. 
It is all very fine to talk about tramps 
and morality. Six hours of police surveil- 
lance (such as I have had), or one brutal 
rejection from an inn door, change your 
views upon the subject like a course of 
lectures. As long as you keep in the 
upper regions, with all the world bowing 
to you as you go, social arrangements have 
a very handsome air ; but once get under 
the wheels, and you wish society were at. 
the devil. I will give most respectable 
men a fortnight of such a life, and then I 



I40 An Inland Voyage 

will offer them twopence for what remains 
of their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of 
the Stag^ or the Hind, or whatever it was, 
I would have set the temple of Diana on 
fire, if it had been handy. There was no 
crime complete enough to express my dis- 
approval of human institutions. As for 
the Cigarette, I never knew a man so 
altered. " We have been taken for pedlars 
again," said he. *' Good God, what it must 
be to be a pedlar in reality! " He particu- 
larised a complaint for every joint in the 
landlady's body. Tifnon was a philanthro- 
pist alongside of him. And then, when he 
was at the top of his maledictory bent, 
he would suddenly break away and begin 
whimperingly to commiserate the poor. 
'' I hope to God,'' he said, — and I trust the 
prayer was answered, — '' that I shall never 
be uncivil to a pedlar." Was this the im- 
perturbable Cigarette ? This, this was he. 
O change beyond report, thought, or belief ! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our 
heads ; and the windows grew brighter 



La Fere of Ctirsed Memory 141 

as the night increased in darkness. We 
trudged in and out of La Fere streets ; we 
saw shops, and private houses where peo- 
ple were copiously dining ; we saw stables 
where carters' nags had plenty of fodder 
and clean straw ; we saw no end of reserv- 
ists, who were very sorry for themselves this 
wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for 
their country homes ; but had they not 
each man his place in La Fere barracks? 
And we, what had we? 

There seemed to be no other inn in the 
whole town. People gave us directions, 
which we followed as best we could, gen- 
erally with the effect of bringing us out 
again upon the scene of our disgrace. We 
were very sad people indeed by the time 
we had gone all over La Fere; and the 
Cigarette had already made up his mind 
to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of 
bread. But right at the other end, the 
house next the towngate was full of light 
and bustle. *' Bazin, aubergiste, loge h pied^* 
was the sign. ''A la Croix de Maltey 
There were we received. 



142 A 71 Inland Voyage 

The room was full of noisy reservists 
drinking and smoking; and we were very 
glad indeed when the drums and bugles 
began to go about the streets, and one 
and all had to snatch shakoes and be off 
for the barracks. 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat : 
soft-spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. 
We asked him to share our wine ; but he 
excused himself, having pledged reservists 
all day long. This was a very different 
type of the workman-innkeeper from the 
bawling disputatious fellow at Origity. He 
also loved Paris, where he had worked as 
a decorative painter in his youth. There 
were such opportunities for self-instruction 
there, he said. And if anyone has read 
Zolas description of the workman's mar- 
riage party visiting the Louvre, they would 
do well to have heard Bazin by way of an- 
tidote. He had delighted in the museums 
in his youth. " One sees there little mira- 
cles of work," he said ; *' that is what makes 
a good workman ; it kindles a spark." We 
asked him, how he managed in La Fkre, 



La Pere of Cursed Memory i43 

" I am married," he said, " and I have my 
pretty children. But frankly, it is no life 
at all. From morning to night, I pledge a 
pack of good enough fellows who know 
nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the 
moon came out of the clouds. We sat in 
front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. 
At the guard-house opposite, the guard 
was being for ever turned out, as trains 
of field artillery kept clanking in out of 
the night, or patrols of horsemen trotted 
by in their cloaks. Madame Bazin came 
out after a while ; she was tired with her 
day's work, I suppose ; and she nestled up 
to her husband and laid her head upon his 
breast. He had his arm about her and kept 
gently patting her on the shoulder. I think 
Bazin was right, and he was really married. 
Of how few people can the same be said ! 

Little did the Bazins know how much 
they served us. We were charged for can- 
dles, for food and drink, and for the beds 
we slept in. But there was nothing in the 
bill for the husband's pleasant talk ; nor for 



144 An hilaiid Voyage 

the pretty spectacle of their married life. 
And there was yet another item uncharged. 
For these people's politeness really set us 
up again in our own esteem. We had a 
thirst for consideration ; the sense of insult 
was still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage 
seemed to restore us to our position in the 
world. 

How little we pay our way in life ! Al- 
though we have our purses continually in 
our hand the better part of service goes still 
unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a 
grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. 
Perhaps the Basins knew how much I liked 
them ? perhaps, they also, were healed of 
some slights by the thanks that I gave 
them in my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE 
THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 

DELOW La Fere the river runs through a 
piece of open pastoral country ; green, 
opulent, loved by breeders ; called the 
Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with 
a swift and equable gallop, the ceaseless 
stream of water visits and makes green the 
fields. Kine, and horses, and little humor- 
ous donkeys, browse together in the mead- 
ows, and come down in troops to the 
river side to drink. They make a strange 
feature in the landscape; above all when 
startled, and you see them galloping to and 
fro, with their incongruous forms and faces. 
It gives a feeling as of great, unfenced 
pampas, and the herds of wandering na- 
tions. There were hills in the distance 
upon either hand ; and on one side, the 
river sometimes bordered on the wooded 
spurs of Coucy and St, Gohain, 

10 



14^ A 71 Inland Voyage 

The artillery were practising at La Fkre ; 
and soon the cannon of heaven joined in 
that loud play. Two continents of cloud 
met and exchanged salvos overhead ; while 
all round the horizon we could see sun- 
shine and clear air upon the hills. What 
with the guns and the thunder, the herds 
were all frighted in the Golden Valley. We 
could see them tossing their heads, and 
running to and fro in timorous indecision ; 
and when they had made up their minds, 
and the donkey followed the horse, and the 
cow was after the donkey, we could hear 
their hooves thundering abroad over the 
meadows. It had a martial sound, like 
cavalry charges. And altogether, as far 
as the ears are concerned, we had a very 
rousing battle piece, performed for our 
amusement. 

At last, the guns and the thunder 
dropped off ; the sun shone on the wet 
meadows ; the air was scented with the 
breath of rejoicing trees and grass ; and 
the river kept unweariedly carrying us on 
at its best pace. There was a manufac- 



Down the Ozse, &c 147 

turing district about Chauny ; and after 
that the banks grew so high that they hid 
the adjacent country, and we could see 
nothing but clay sides, and one willow 
after another. Only, here and there, we 
passed by a village or a ferry, and some 
wondering child upon the bank would stare 
after us until we turned the corner. I 
daresay we continued to paddle in that 
child's dreams for many a night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and 
night, making the hours longer by their 
variety. When the showers were heavy 
I could feel each drop striking though my 
jersey to my warm skin ; and the accumu- 
lation of small shocks put me nearly beside 
myself. I decided I should buy a mackin- 
tosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet ; 
but the misery of these individual pricks 
of cold all over my body at the same in- 
stant of time, made me flail the water with 
my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette 
was greatly amused by these ebullitions. 
It gave him something else to look at, 
besides clay banks and willows. 



148 An Inland Voyage 

All the time, the river stole away like a 
thief in straight places, or swung round 
corners with an eddy ; the willows nodded 
and were undermined all day long ; the 
clay banks tumbled in ; the Oise, which 
had been so many centuries making the 
Golden Valley, seemed to have changed its 
fancy, and be bent upon undoing its per- 
formance. What a number of things a 
river does, by simply following Gravity in 
the innocence of its heart ! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 

A TO YON stands about a mile from the 
river, in a little plain surrounded by 
wooded hills, and entirely covers an emi- 
nence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a 
long, straight-backed cathedral with two 
stiff towers. As we got into the town, 
the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one 
upon another, in the oddest disorder ; but 
for all their scrambling, they did not attain 
above the knees of the cathedral, which 
stood, upright and solemn, over all. As 
the streets drew near to this presiding 
genius, through the market place under 
the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier and 
more composed. Blank walls and shut- 
tered windows were turned to the great 
edifice, and grass grew on the white cause- 
way. " Put off thy shoes from off thy 
feet, for the place whereon thou standest 
is holy ground." The Hotel du Nord, 



ISO An Inland Voyage 

nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within 
a stone cast of the church ; and we had 
the superb east-end before our eyes all 
morning from the window of our bed- 
room. I have seldom looked on the east- 
end of a church with more complete 
sympathy. As it flanges out in three 
wide terraces, and settles down broadly 
on the earth, it looks like the poop of 
some great old battle ship. Hollow-backed 
buttresses carry vases, which figure for the 
stern lanterns. There is a roll in the 
ground, and the towers just appear above 
the pitch of the roof, as though the good 
ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic 
swell. At any moment it might be a 
hundred feet away from you, climbing the 
next billow. At any moment a window 
might open, and some old admiral thrust 
forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take 
an observation. The old admirals sail the 
sea no longer ; the old ships of battle are 
all broken up, and live only in pictures ; 
but this, that was a church before ever 
they were thought upon, is still a church, 



Noyon Cathedral 151 

and makes as brave an appearance by the 
Oise. The cathedral and the river are 
probably the two oldest things for miles 
around ; and certainly they have both a 
grand old age. 

The Sacristan took us to the top of one 
of the towers, and showed us the five 
bells hanging in their loft. From above, 
the town was a tesselated pavement of 
roofs and gardens ; the old line of rampart 
was plainly traceable ; and the Sacristan 
pointed out to us, far across the plain, in 
a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, 
the towers of Chdteau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. 
It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. 
Mankind was never so happily inspired as 
when it made a cathedral : a thing as single 
and specious as a statue to the first glance, 
and yet, on examination, as lively and inter- 
esting as a forest in detail. The height of 
spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; 
they measure absurdly short, but how tall 
they are to the admiring eye ! And where 
we have so many elegant proportions, 



152 An Inland Voyage 

growing one out of the other, and all to- 
gether into one, it seems as if proportion 
transcended itself and became something 
different and more imposing. I could 
never fathom how a man dares to lift up 
his voice to preach in a cathedral. What 
is he to say that will not be an anti-climax? 
For though I have heard a considerable 
variety of sermons, I never yet heard one 
that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis 
the best preacher itself, and preaches day 
and night ; not only telling you of man's 
art and aspirations in the past, but con- 
victing your own soul of ardent sympa- 
thies ; or rather, like all good preachers, it 
sets you preaching to yourself ; — and every 
man is his own doctor of divinity in the 
last ressort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course 
of the afternoon, the sweet groaning thun- 
der of the organ floated out of the church 
like a summons. I was not averse, liking 
the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two 
of the play, but I could never rightly make 
out the nature of the service I beheld. 



Noyon Cathedral 153 

Four or five priests and as many choristers 
were singing Miserere before the high altar 
when I went in. There was no congrega- 
tion but a few old women on chairs and old 
men kneeling on the pavement. After a 
while a long train of young girls, walking 
two and two, each with a lighted taper in 
her hand, and all dressed in black with a 
white veil, came from behind the altar and 
began to descend the nave ; the four first 
carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. 
The priests and choristers arose from their 
knees and followed after, singing "Ave 
Mary " as they went. In this order, they 
made the circuit of the cathedral, passing 
twice before me where I leaned against a 
pillar. The priest who seemed of most 
consequence was a strange, down-looking 
old man. He kept mumbling prayers with 
his lips ; but as he looked upon me dark- 
ling, it did not seem as if prayer were 
uppermost in his heart. Two others, who 
bore the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, 
brutal, military-looking men of forty, with 
bold, over-fed eyes ; they sang with some 



154 An Inland Voyage 

lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" 
like a garrison catch. The little girls 
were timid and grave. As they footed 
slowly up the aisle, each one took a 
moment's glance at the Englishman; and 
the big nun who played marshal fairly 
stared him out of countenance. As for 
the choristers, from first to last they mis- 
behaved as only boys can misbehave ; and 
cruelly marred the performance with their 
antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit 
of what went on. Indeed it would be 
difficult not to understand the Miserere^ 
which I take to be the composition of an 
atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take 
such despondency to heart, the Miserere 
is the right music and a cathedral a fit 
scene. So far I am at one with the Cath- 
olics: — an odd name for them, after all? 
But why, in God's name, these holiday 
choristers? why these priests who steal 
wandering looks about the congregation 
while they feign to be at prayer ? why this 
fat nun, who rudely arranges her proces- 



Noyon Cathedral 15S 

sion and shakes delinquent virgins by the 
elbow ? why this spitting, and snuffing, 
and forgetting of keys, and the thousand 
and one little misadventures that disturb 
a frame of mind, laboriously edified with 
chaunts and organings? In any play-house 
reverend fathers may see what can be done 
with a little art, and how, to move high 
sentiments, it is necessary to drill the 
supernumeraries and have every stool in 
its proper place. 

One other circumstance distressed me. 
I could bear a Miserere myself, having had 
a good deal of open air exercise of late ; 
but I wished the old people somewhere 
else. It was neither the right sort of 
music nor the right sort of divinity, for 
men and women who have come through 
most accidents by this time, and probably 
have an opinion of their own upon the 
tragic element in life. A person up in 
years can generally do his own Miserere 
for himself ; although I notice that such 
an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his 
ordinary singing. On the whole, the most 



15^ An Inland Voyage 

religious exercise for the aged is probably 
to recall their own experience ; so many 
friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, 
so many slips and stumbles, and withal so 
many bright days and smiling providences ; 
there is surely the matter of a very elo- 
quent sermon in all this. 

On the whole, I was greatly solemnised. 
In the little pictorial map of our whole 
Inlmid Voyage, which my fancy still 
preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the 
amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathe- 
dral figures on a most preposterous scale, 
and must be nearly as large as a depart- 
ment. I can still see the faces of the 
priests as if they were at my elbow, and 
hear Ave Maria, or a pro nobis sounding 
through the church. All Noyon is blotted 
out for me by these superior memories ; 
and I do not care to say more about the 
place. It was but a stack of brown roofs 
at the best, where I believe people live 
very reputably in a quiet way; but the 
shadow of the church falls upon it when 
the sun is low, and the five bells are heard 



Noyon Cathedral 157 

in all quarters, telling that the organ has 
begun. If ever I join the church of Rome, 
I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on 
the Oise, 



DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIEGNE 

T^HE most patient people grow weary at 
last with being continually wetted with 
rain ; except of course in the Scotch High- 
lands, where there are not enough fine in- 
tervals to point the difference. That was 
like to be our case, the day we left Noyon, 
I remember nothing of the voyage; it was 
nothing but clay banks and willows, and 
rain ; incessant, pitiless, beating rain : until 
we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pim- 
prez, where the canal ran very near the 
river. We were so sadly drenched that the 
landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for 
our comfort ; there we sat in a steam of 
vapour, lamenting our concerns. The hus- 
band donned a game bag and strode out to 
shoot ; the wife sat in a far corner watching 
us. I think, we were worth looking at. 
We grumbled over the misfortune of La 
Fere ; we forecast other La Feres in the 



Down the Oise : to Compzegne i59 

future ; — although things went better with 
the Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more 
aplomb altogether than I ; and a dull, posi- 
tive way of approaching a landlady that 
carried off the india-rubber bags. Talking 
of La Fere, put us talking of the reservists. 

" Reservery/' said he, " seems a pretty 
mean way to spend one's autumn holiday." 

" About as mean," returned I dejectedly, 
"as canoeing." 

" These gentlemen travel for their pleas- 
ure?" asked the landlady, with uncon- 
scious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from 
our eyes. Another wet day, it was deter- 
mined, and we put the boats into the train. 

The weather took the hint. That was 
our last wetting. The afternoon faired up : 
grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
now singly, and with a depth of blue around 
their path ; and a sunset, in the daintiest 
rose and gold, inaugurated a thick night of 
stars and a month of unbroken weather. 
At the same time, the river began to give 
us a better outlook into the country. The 



i6o An Inland Voyage 

banks were not so high, the willows disap* 
peared from along the margin, and pleasant 
hills stood all along its course and marked 
their profile on the sky. 

In a little while, the canal, coming to its 
last lock, began to discharge its water- 
houses on the Oise ; so that we had no lack 
of company to fear. Here were all our old 
friends ; the Deo Gratias of Conde and the 
Four Sons of Aymon, journeyed cheerily 
down stream along with us ; we exchanged 
waterside pleasantries with the steersman 
perched among the lumber, or the driver 
hoarse with bawling to his horses ; and the 
children came and looked over the side as 
we paddled by. We had never known all 
this while how much we missed them ; but 
it gave us a fillip to see the smoke from 
their chimneys. 

A little below this junction, we made 
another meeting of yet more account. 
For there we were joined by the Aisne, 
already a far-travelled river and fresh out 
of Champagne, Here ended the adoles- 
cence of the Oise; this was his marriage 



Down the Oise : to Compiegne i6i 

day ; thenceforward he had a stately, brim- 
ming march, conscious of his own dignity 
and sundry dams. He became a tranquil 
feature in the scene. The trees and towns 
saw themselves in him, as in a mirror. He 
carried the canoes lightly on his broad 
breast ; there was no need to work hard 
against an eddy : but idleness became the 
order of the day, and mere straightfor- 
ward dipping of the paddle, now on this 
side, now on that, without intelligence or 
effort. Truly we were coming into hal- 
cyon weather upon all accounts, and were 
floated towards the sea like gentlemen. 

We made Compiegne^ as the sun was 
going down : a fine profile of a town 
above the river. Over the bridge, a regi- 
ment was parading to the drum. People 
loitered on the quay, some fishing, some 
looking idly at the stream. And as the 
two boats shot in along the water, we 
could see them pointing them out and 
speaking one to another. We landed at a 
floating lavatory, where the washerwomen 
were still beating the clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE 

\17'E put up at a big, bustling hotel in 
Compiegne, where nobody observed 
our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as 
the Germans call it), was rampant. A 
camp of conical white tents without the 
town, looked like a leaf out of a picture 
Bible ; sword-belts decorated the walls of 
the caf^s; and the streets kept sounding 
all day long with military music. It was 
not possible to be an Englishman and 
avoid a feeling of elation ; for the men 
who followed the drums were small, and 
walked shabbily. Each man inclined at 
his own angle, and jolted to his own con- 
venience, as he went. There was nothing 
of the superb gait with which a regiment 
of tall highlanders moves behind its music, 
solemn and inevitable, like a natural phe- 
nomenon. Who, that has seen it, can for- 



At Compi'egne 163 

get the drum-major pacing in front, the 
drummers' tiger-skins, the pipers* swing- 
ing plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the 
whole regiment footing it in time — and 
the bang of the drum, when the brasses 
cease, and the shrill pipes take up the 
martial story in their place? 

A girl, at school in France, began to 
describe one of our regiments on parade, 
to her French schoolmates ; and as she 
went on, she told me, the recollection grew 
so vivid, she became so proud to be the 
countrywoman of such soldiers, and so 
sorry to be in another country, that her 
voice failed her and she burst into tears. 
I have never forgotten that girl ; and I 
think she very nearly deserves a statue. 
To call her a young lady, with all its 
niminy associations, would be to offer her 
an insult. She may rest assured of one 
thing ; although she never should marry a 
heroic general, never see any great or im- 
mediate result of her life, she will not have 
lived in vain for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill- 



164 An htlaiid Voyage 

advantage on parade, on the march they 
are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of 
fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a 
company pass through the forest of Fon- 
tainebleaUy on the Chailly road, between the 
Bas Brcau and the Reine Blanche, One 
fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
sang a loud, audacious marching song. 
The rest bestirred their feet, and even 
swung their muskets in time. A young 
ofificer on horseback had hard ado to keep 
his countenance at the words. You never 
saw anything so cheerful and spontaneous 
as their gait ; schoolboys do not look more 
eagerly at hare and hounds ; and you would 
have thought it impossible to tire such 
willing marchers. 

My great delight in Compi^gne was the 
town-hall. I doted upon the town-hall. It 
is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all 
turretted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and 
bedizened with half a score of architect- 
ural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt 
and painted ; and in a great square panel 
in the centre, in black relief on a gilt 



At Compiegne 165 

ground, Louis XII. rides upon a pacing 
horse, with hand on hip, and head thrown 
back. There is royal arrogance in every 
line of him ; the stirrupped foot projects 
insolently from the frame ; the eye is hard 
and proud ; the very horse seems to be 
treading with gratification over prostrate 
serfs, and to have the breath of the trumpet 
in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on the 
front of the town-hall, the good king Louis 
XII., the father of his people. 

Over the king's head, in the tall centre 
turret, appears the dial of a clock ; and high 
above that, three little mechanical figures, 
each one with a hammer in his hand, whose 
business it is to chime out the hours and 
halves and quarters for the burgesses of 
Compiegne. The centre figure has a gilt 
breast-plate ; the two others wear gilt 
trunk-hose ; and they all three have ele- 
gant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the 
quarter approaches, they turn their heads 
and look knowingly one to the other; 
and then, kling go the three hammers 
on three little bells below. The hour fol- 



1 66 An Inland Voyage 

lows, deep and sonorous, from the in- 
terior of the tower; and the gilded gen- 
tlemen rest from their labours with con- 
tentment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure 
from their manoeuvres, and took good care 
to miss as few performances as possible ; 
and I found that even the Cigarette, while 
he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, 
was more or less a devotee himself. There 
is something highly absurd in the exposi- 
tion of such toys to the outrages of winter 
on a housetop. They would be more in 
keeping in a glass case before a Nurnberg 
clock. Above all, at night, when the chil- 
dren are abed, and even grown people are 
snoring under quilts, does it not seem im- 
pertinent to leave these ginger-bread figures 
winking and tinkling to the stars and the 
rolling moon ? The gargoyles may fitly 
enough twist their ape-like heads ; fitly 
enough may the potentate bestride his 
charger, like a centurion in an old German 
print of the Via Dolorosa; but the toys 
should be put away in a box among some 



At Compiegne 167 

cotton, until the sun rises, and the children 
are abroad again to be amused. 

In Compiegne post-office, a great packet 
of letters awaited us ; and the authorities 
were, for this occasion only, so polite as to 
hand them over upon application. 

In some way, our journey may be said to 
end with this letter-bag at Compilgiie. The 
spell was broken. We had partly come 
home from that moment. 

No one should have any correspondence 
on a journey ; it is bad enough to have to 
write ; but the receipt of letters is the death 
of all holiday feeling. 

*'Out of my country and myself I go." 
I wish to take a dive among new conditions 
for awhile, as into another element. I have 
nothing to do with my friends or my affec- 
tions for the time ; when I came away, I 
left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it 
forward with my portmanteau to await me 
at my destination. After my journey is 
over, I shall not fail to read your admirable 
letters with the attention they deserve. 
But I have paid all this money, look you, 



1 68 An Inland Voyage 

and paddled all these strokes, for no other 
purpose than to be abroad; and yet you 
keep me at home with your perpetual com- 
munications. You tug the string, and I 
feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue 
me all over Europe with the little vexations 
that I came away to avoid. There is no 
discharge in the war of life, I am well 
aware ; but shall there not be so much as 
a week's furlough ? 

We were up by six, the day we were to 
leave. They had taken so little note of us 
that I hardly thought they would have con- 
descended on a bill. But they did, with 
some smart particulars too ; and we paid in 
a civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, 
and went out of that hotel, with the india- 
rubber bags, unremarked. No one cared 
to know about us. It is not possible to 
rise before a village ; but Compiegne was 
so grown a town, that it took its ease in 
the morning; and we were up and away 
while it was still in dressing gown and 
slippers. The streets were left to people 
washing door-steps ; nobody was in full 



Ai Compiegne 169 

dress but the cavaliers upon the town-hall ; 
they were all washed with dew, spruce in 
their gilding, and full of intelligence and a 
sense of professional responsibility. Kling, 
went they on the bells for the half-past six, 
as we went by. I took it kind of them to 
make me this parting comphment ; they 
never were in better form, not even at noon 
upon a Sunday. 

There was no one to see us off but the 
early washerwomen— early and late— who 
were already beating the linen in their 
floating lavatory on the river. They were 
very merry and matutinal in their ways; 
plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed 
not to feel the shock. It would be dis- 
piriting to me, this early beginning and 
first cold dabble, of a most dispiriting day's 
work. But I believe they would have been 
as unwilling to change days with us, as 
we could be to change with them. They 
crowded to the door to watch us paddle 
away into the thin sunny mists upon the 
river; and shouted heartily after us till 
we were through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES 

TTHERE is a sense in which those mists 
never rose from off our journey ; and 
from that time forth they lie very densely 
in my note-book. As long as the Oise 
was a small rural river, it took us near 
by people's doors, and we could hold a 
conversation with natives in the riparian 
fields. But now that It had grown so 
wide, the life along shore passed us by at 
a distance. It was the same difference 
as between a great public highway and a 
country bypath that wanders in and out 
of cottage gardens. We now lay in towns, 
where nobody troubled us with questions ; 
we had floated into civilised life, where 
people pass without salutation. In sparsely 
inhabited places, we make all we can of 
each encounter ; but when it comes to a 
city, we keep to ourselves, and never speak 
unless we have trodden on a man's toes. 



Changed Times lyi 

In these waters, we were no longer strange 
birds, and nobody supposed we had trav- 
elled further than from the last town. I 
remember, when we Cdime -into LVs/e Adam, 
for instance, how we met dozens of pleas- 
ure-boats outing it for the afternoon, and 
there was nothing to distinguish the true 
voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, 
the filthy condition of my sail. The com- 
pany in one boat actually thought they 
recognized me for a neighbour. Was there 
ever anything more wounding? All the 
romance had come down to that. Now, 
on the upper Oise, where nothing sailed 
as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoe- 
ists could not be thus vulgarly explained 
away ; we were strange and picturesque 
intruders ; and out of people's wonder, 
sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy 
all along our route. There is nothing but 
tit for tat in this world, though some- 
times it be a little difficult to trace; for 
the scores are older than we ourselves, and 
there has never yet been a settling-day 
since things were. You get entertainment 



1/2 An Inland Voyage 

pretty much in proportion as you give. As 
long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, 
to be stared at and followed like a quack 
doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
amusement in return ; but as soon as we 
sank into commonplace ourselves, all whom 
we met were similarly disenchanted. And 
here is one reason of a dozen, why the 
world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was gen- 
erally something to do, and that quickened 
us. Even the showers of rain had a revivi- 
fying effect, and shook up the brain from 
torpor. But now, when the river no longer 
ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward 
with an even, outright, but imperceptible 
speed, and when the sky smiled upon us 
day after day without variety, we began to 
slip into that golden doze of the mind 
which follows upon much exercise in the 
open air. I have stupefied myself in this 
way more than once ; indeed, I dearly love 
the feeling ; but I never had it to the same 
degree as when paddling down the Oise. 
It was the apotheosis of stupidity. 



Changed Times 173 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes 
when I found a new paper, I took a partic- 
ular pleasure in reading a single number 
of the current novel ; but I never could 
bear more than three instalments ; and 
even the second was a disappointment. As 
soon as the tale became in any way perspic- 
uous, it lost all merit in my eyes ; only a 
single scene, or, as is the way with these 
feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent 
or consequence, like a piece of a dream, had 
the knack of fixing my interest. The less 
I saw of the novel, the better I liked it : a 
pregnant reflection. But for the most part, 
as I said, we neither of us read anything 
in the world, and employed the very little 
while we were awake between bed and din- 
ner in poring upon maps. I have always 
been fond of maps, and can voyage in an 
atlas with the greatest enjoyment. The 
names of places are singularly inviting ; the 
contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling 
to the eye ; and to hit, in a map, upon some 
place you have heard before, makes history 
a new possession. But we thumbed our 



174 An Inland Voyage 

charts, on these evenings, with the blankest 
unconcern. We cared not a fraction for 
this place or that. We stared at the sheet 
as children listen to their rattle ; and read 
the names of towns or villages to forget 
them again at once. We had no romance 
in the matter ; there was nobody so fancy- 
free. If you had taken the maps away 
while we were studying them most intently, 
it is a fair bet Avhether we might not have 
continued to study the table with the same 
delight. 

About one thing we were mightily taken 
up, and that was eating. I think I made a 
god of my belly. I remember dwelling in 
imagination upon this or that dish till my 
mouth watered ; and long before we got in 
for the night my appetite was a clamant, 
instant annoyance. Sometimes we pad- 
dled alongside for awhile and whetted each 
other with gastronomical fancies as we 
went. Cake and sherry, a homely refec- 
tion, but not within reach upon the Oise, 
trotted through my head for many a mile ; 
and once, as we were approaching Verberie, 



Ckmzged Times 175 

the Cigarette brought my heart into my 
mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties 
and Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognise the great 
part that is played in life by eating and 
drinking. The appetite is so imperious, 
that we can stomach the least interesting 
viands, and pass off a dinner hour thank- 
fully enough on bread and water ; just as 
there are men who must read something, 
if it were only Bradshaiv s Guide, But 
there is a romance about the matter after 
all. Probably the table has more devotees 
than love ; and I am sure that food is much 
more generally entertaining than scenery. 
Do you give in, as Walt Whitman would 
say, that you are any the less immortal 
for that ? The true materialism is to be 
ashamed of what we are. To detect the 
flavour of an olive is no less a piece of 
human perfection, than to find beauty in 
the colours of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the 
paddle at the proper inclination, now right, 
now left ; to keep the head down stream ; 



1/6 An Inland Voyage 

to empty the little pool that gathered in 
the lap of the apron ; to screw up the eyes 
against the glittering sparkles of sun upon 
the water ; or now and again to pass below 
the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias 
of Cond^, or the Four Sons of Aynion — there 
was not much art in that ; certain silly 
muscles managed it between sleep and 
waking ; and meanwhile the brain had a 
whole holiday, and went to sleep. We 
took in, at a glance, the larger features of 
the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, 
bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen 
on the bank. Now and again we might be 
half wakened by some church spire, by a 
leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass 
that clung about the paddle and had to be 
plucked off and thrown away. But these 
luminous intervals were only partially lumi- 
nous. A little more of us was called into 
action, but never the whole. The central 
bureau of nerves, what in some moods we 
call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday without 
disturbance, like a Government Office. 
The great wheels of intelligence turned 



Changed Times 177 

idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding 
no grist. I have gone on for half an hour 
at a time, counting my strokes and forget- 
ting the hundreds. I flatter myself the 
beasts that perish could not underbid that, 
as a low form of consciousness. And what 
a pleasure it was ! What a hearty, tolerant 
temper did it bring about ! There is noth- 
ing captious about a man who has attained to 
this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the 
Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he begins to 
feel dignified and longaevous like a tree. 

There was one odd piece of practical 
metaphysics which accompanied what I 
may call the depth, if I must not call it the 
intensity, of my abstraction. What philos- 
ophers call me and not me, ego and non ego, 
pre-occupied me whether I would or no. 
There was less me and more not me than I 
was accustomed to expect. I looked on 
upon somebody else, who managed the 
paddling ; I was aware of somebody else's 
feet against the stretcher ; my own body 
seemed to have no more intimate relation 

to me than the canoe, or the river, or the 
12 



178 An Inland Voyage 

river banks. Nor this alone : something 
inside my mind, a part of my brain, a 
province of my proper being, had thrown 
off allegiance and set up for itself, or per- 
haps for the somebody else who did the 
paddling. I had dwindled into quite a 
little thing in a corner of myself. I was 
isolated in my own skull. Thoughts pre- 
sented themselves unbidden ; they were 
not my thoughts, they were plainly some- 
one else's ; and I considered them like a 
part of the landscape. I take it, in short, 
that I was about as near Nirvana as would 
be convenient in practical life ; and if this 
be so, I make the Buddhists my sincere 
compliments ; 'tis an agreeable state, not 
very consistent with mental brilliancy, not 
exactly profitable in a money point of view, 
but very calm, golden and incurious, and 
one that sets a man superior to alarms. 
It may be best figured by supposing your- 
self to get dead drunk, and yet keep sober 
to enjoy it. I have a notion that open 
air labourers must spend a large portion of 
their days in this ecstatic stupor, which ex- 



Changed Times 179 

plains their high composure and endurance. 
A pity to go to the expense of laudanum, 
when here is a better paradise for nothing ! 
This frame of mind was the great exploit 
of our voyage, take it all in all. It was 
the ^farthest piece of travel accomplished. 
Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of 
language, that I despair of getting the 
reader into sympathy with the smiling, 
complacent idiocy of my condition ; when 
ideas came and went like motes in a sun- 
beam ; when trees and church spires along 
the bank surged up, from time to time 
into my notice, like solid objects through 
a rolling cloudland ; when the rhythmical 
swish of boat and paddle in the water 
became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts 
asleep ; when a piece of mud on the deck 
was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and 
sometimes quite a companion for me, and 
the object of pleased consideration ; — 
and all the time, with the river running 
and the shores changing upon either hand, 
I kept counting my strokes and forgetting 
the hundreds, the happiest animal in France. 



DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS 

\17E made our first stage below Com- 
picgne to Pont Saint e Maxence. I was 
abroad a little after six the next morning. 
The air was biting and smelt of frost. In 
an open place, a score of women wrangled 
together over the day's market ; and the 
noise of their negotiation sounded thin and 
querulous like that of sparrows on a win- 
ter's morning. The rare passengers blew 
into their hands, and shufifled in their 
wooden shoes to set the blood agog. The 
streets were full of icy shadow, although 
the chimneys were smoking overhead in 
golden sunshine. If you wake early enough 
at this season of the year, you may get up 
in December to break your fast in June. 

I found my way to the church ; for there 
is always something to see about a church, 
whether living worshippers or dead men's 
tombs ; you find there the deadliest earn- 



Dow 71 the Oise i8i 

est, and the hollowest deceit ; and even 
where it is not a piece of history, it will be 
certain to leak out some contemporary gos- 
sip. It was scarcely so cold in the church 
as it was without, but it looked colder. 
The white nave was positively arctic to the 
eye ; and the tawdriness of a continental 
altar looked more forlorn than usual in the 
solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat 
in the chancel, reading and waiting peni- 
tents ; and out in the nave, one very old 
woman was engaged in her devotions. It 
was a wonder how she was able to pass her 
beads when healthy young people were 
breathing in their palms and slapping their 
chest ; but though this concerned me, I was 
yet more dispirited by the nature of her 
exercises. She went from chair to chair, 
from altar to altar, circumnavigating the 
church. To each shrine, she dedicated an 
equal number of beads and an equal length 
of time. Like a prudent capitalist with a 
somewhat cynical view of the commercial 
prospect, she desired to place her supplica- 
tions in a great variety of heavenly secur- 



1 82 An Inland Voyage 

ities. She would risk nothing on the credit 
of any single intercessor. Out of the whole 
company of saints and angels, not one but 
was to suppose himself her champion elect 
against the Great Assizes ! I could only 
think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, 
based upon unconscious unbelief. 

She was as dead an old woman as ever I 
saw ; no more than bone and parchment, 
curiously put together. Her eyes, with 
which she interrogated mine, were vacant 
of sense. It depends on what you call 
seeing, whether you might not call her 
blind. Perhaps she had known love : per- 
haps borne children, suckled them and 
given them pet names. But now that was 
all gone by, and had left her neither hap- 
pier nor wiser ; and the best she could do 
with her mornings was to come up here 
into the cold church and juggle for a slice 
of heaven. It was not without a gulp that 
I escaped into the streets and the keen 
morning air. Morning ? why, how tired of 
it she would be before night ! and if she did 
not sleep, how then ? It is fortunate that 



Down the Oise 183 

not many of us are brought up publicly to 
justify our lives at the bar of three score 
years and ten ; fortunate that such a num- 
ber are knocked opportunely on the head 
in what they call the flower of their years, 
and go away to suffer for their follies in pri- 
vate somewhere else. Otherwise, between 
sick children and discontented old folk, we 
might be put out of all conceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene 
during that day's paddle : the old devotee 
stuck in my throat sorely. But I was 
soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity ; 
and knew nothing but that somebody was 
paddling a canoe, while I was counting his 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I 
used sometimes to be afraid I should re- 
member the hundreds ; which would have 
made a toil of a pleasure ; but the terror 
was chimerical, they went out of my mind 
by enchantment, and I knew no more than 
the man in the moon about my only occu- 
pation. 

At Creil^ where we stopped to lunch, we 
left the canoes in another floating lavatory, 



1 84 An Inland Voyage 

which, as it was high noon, was packed 
with washerwomen, red-handed and loud- 
voiced ; and they and their broad jokes are 
about all I remember of the place. I could 
look up my history books, if you were very 
anxious, and tell you a date or two ; for it 
figured rather largely in the English wars. 
But I prefer to mention a girls' boarding- 
school, which had an interest for us be- 
cause it was a girls' boarding-school, and 
because we imagined we had rather an 
interest for it. At least — there were the 
girls about the garden ; and here were we 
on the river ; and there was more than one 
handkerchief waved as we went by. It 
caused quite a stir in my heart ; and yet 
how we should have wearied and despised 
each other, these girls and I, if we had been 
introduced at a croquet party ! But this is 
a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or wave 
a handkerchief to people I shall never see 
again, to play with possibility, and knock 
in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives 
the traveller a jog, reminds him that he is 
not a traveller everywhere, and that his 



Down the Oise 185 

journey is no more than a siesta by the 
way on the real march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript 
place in the inside, splashed with gaudy 
lights from the windows, and picked out 
with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But 
there was one oddity, in the way of an ex 
vote, which pleased me hugely : a faithful 
model of a canal boat, swung from the 
vault, with a written aspiration that God 
should conduct the Saint Nicolas of Creil 
to a good haven. The thing was neatly 
executed, and would have made the delight 
of a party of boys on the waterside. But 
what tickled me was the gravity of the 
peril to be conjured. You might hang up 
the model of a sea-going ship, and wel- 
come : one that is to plough a furrow round 
the world, and visit the tropic or the frosty 
poles, runs dangers that are well worth a 
candle and a mass. But the Saint Nicolas 
of Creil, which was to be tugged for some 
ten years by patient draught horses, in a 
weedy canal, with the poplars chattering 
overhead, and the skipper whistling at the 



1 86 An Inland Voyage 

tiller ; which was to do all its errands in 
green, inland places, and never got out of 
sight of a village belfry in all its cruising ; 
why, you would have thought if anything 
could be done without the intervention of 
Providence, it would be that ! But perhaps 
the skipper was a humourist : or perhaps a 
prophet, reminding people of the serious- 
ness of life by this preposterous token. 

At Creily as at Noyon^ Saint Joseph 
seemed a favourite saint on the score of 
punctuality. Day and hour can be speci- 
fied ; and grateful people do not fail to 
specify them on a votive tablet, when 
prayers have been punctually and neatly 
answered. Whenever time is a considera- 
tion, Saint Joseph is the proper intermedi- 
ary. I took a sort of pleasure in observing 
the vogue he had in France, for the good 
man plays a very small part in my religion 
at home. Yet I could not help fearing 
that, where the Saint is so much com- 
mended for exactitude, he will be expected 
to be very grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants ; 



Down the Oise 187 

and not of great importance anyway. 
Whether people's gratitude for the good 
gifts that come to them, be wisely con- 
ceived or dutifully expressed, is a second- 
ary matter, after all, so long as they feel 
gratitude. The true ignorance is when a 
man does not know that he has received 
a good gift, or begins to imagine that he 
has got it for himself. The self-made man 
is the funniest windbag after all ! There is 
a marked difference between decreeing 
light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a 
metropolitan back-parlour with a box of 
patent matches ; and do what we will, there 
is always something made to our hand, if 
it were only our fingers. 

But there was something worse than fool- 
ishness placarded in Creil Church. The 
Association of the Living Rosary (of which 
I had never previously heard) is responsible 
for that. This association was founded, 
according to the printed advertisement, by 
a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 
17th of January, 1832 : according to a 
coloured bas relief, it seems to have been 



1 88 An Inland Voyage 

founded, sometime or other, by the Virgin 
giving one rosary to Saint Dominic, and 
the Infant Saviour giving another to Saint 
Catherine of Sienna. Pope Gregory is not 
so imposing, but he is nearer hand. I 
could not distinctly make out whether the 
association was entirely devotional, or had 
an eye to good works ; at least it is highly 
organized : the names of fourteen matrons 
and misses were filled in for each week of 
the month as associates, with one other, 
generally a married woman, at the top for 
Zdatrice : the choragus of the band. In- 
dulgences, plenary and partial, follow on 
the performance of the duties of the asso- 
ciation. '' The partial indulgences are at- 
tached to the recitation of the rosary." On 
*' the recitation of the required dizainc^' a 
partial indulgence promptly follows. When 
people serve the kingdom of Heaven with 
a pass-book in their hands, I should always 
be afraid lest they should carry the same 
commercial spirit into their dealings with 
their fellow-men, which would make a sad 
and sordid business of this life. 



Down the Oise 189 

There is one more article, however, of 
happier import. "All these indulgences," 
it appeared, *' are applicable to souls in 
purgatory." For God's sake, ye ladies of 
Creil, apply them all to the souls in purga- 
tory without delay ! Burns would take no 
hire for his last songs, preferring to serve 
his country out of unmixed love. Suppose 
you were to imitate the exciseman, mes- 
dames, and even if the souls in purgatory 
were not greatly bettered, some souls in 
Creil upon the Oise would find themselves 
none the worse either here or hereafter. 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe 
these notes, whether a Protestant born 
and bred is in a fit state to understand 
these signs, and do them what justice they 
deserve ; and I cannot help answering that 
he is not. They cannot look so merely 
ugly and mean to the faithful as they do 
to me. I see that as clearly as a proposi- 
tion in Euclid. For these believers are 
neither weak nor wicked. They can put 
up their tablet commending Saint Joseph 
for his despatch, as if he were still a village 



190 An Inland Voyage 

carpenter ; they can " recite the required 
dizainej' and metaphorically pocket the 
indulgence, as if they had done a job for 
heaven ; and then they can go out and 
look down unabashed upon this wonderful 
river flowing by, and up without confusion 
at the pin-point stars, which are themselves 
great worlds full of flowing rivers greater 
than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, 
as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protes- 
tant mind has missed the point, and that 
there goes with these deformities some 
higher and more religious spirit than I 
dream. 

I wonder if other people would make 
the same allowances for me? Like the 
ladies of Creil having recited my rosary of 
toleration, I look for my indulgence on the 
spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 

AIZE made Prccy about sundown. The 
plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In 
a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under 
the hill side. A faint mist began to rise 
and confound the different distances to- 
gether. There was not a sound audible 
but that of the sheep-bells in some mead- 
ows by the river, and the creaking of a 
cart down the long road that descends the 
hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops 
along the street, all seemed to have been 
deserted the day before ; and I felt inclined 
to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent 
forest. All of a sudden, we came round a 
corner, and there, in a little green round 
the church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian 
costumes playing croquet. Their laughter 
and the hollow sound of ball and mallet, 
made a cheery stir in the neighbourhood ; 
and the look of these slim figures, all cor- 



192 An Inland Voyage 

seted and ribboned, produced an answer- 
able disturbance in our hearts. We were 
within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here 
were females of our own species playing 
croquet, just as if Prdcy had been a place 
in real life, instead of a stage in the fairy 
land of travel. For, to be frank, the peas- 
ant woman is scarcely to be counted as a 
woman at all, and after having passed by 
such a succession of people in petticoats 
digging and hoeing and making dinner, this 
company of coquettes under arms made 
quite a surprising feature in the landscape, 
and convinced us at once of being fallible 
males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in 
France. Not even \\\ Scotland \\2i\& I found 
worse fare. It was kept by a brother and 
sister, neither of whom was out of their 
teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a 
meal for us ; and the brother, who had been 
tippling, came in and brought with him a 
tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. 
We found pieces of loo-warm pork among 
the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding 



Precy and the Marionettes i93 

substance in the ragoiU. The butcher en- 
tertained us with pictures of Parisian life, 
with which he professed himself well ac- 
quainted ; the brother sitting the while on 
the edge of the billiard table, toppling pre- 
cariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. 
In the midst of these diversions, bang went 
a drum past the house, and a hoarse voice 
began issuing a proclamation. It was a 
man with marionettes announcing a per- 
formance for that evening. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted 
his candles on another part of the girls' 
croquet green, under one of those open 
sheds which are so common in France to 
shelter markets ; and he and his wife, by 
the time we strolled up there, were trying 
to keep order with the audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The 
show-people had set out a certain number 
of benches ; and all who sat upon them 
were to pay a couple of sous for the accom- 
modation. They were always quite full — 
a bumper house — as long as nothing was 

going forward ; but let the show-woman 
13 



194 An hiland Voyage 

appear with an eye to a collection, and at 
the first rattle of her tambourine, the audi- 
ence slipped off the seats, and stood round 
on the outside with their hands in theif 
pockets. It certainly would have tried 
an angel's temper. The showman roared 
from the proscenium ; he had been all ovei' 
France^ and nowhere, nowhere, " not even 
on the borders of Germany^' had he met 
with such misconduct. Such thieves and 
rogues and rascals, as he called them ! And 
every now and again, the wife issued on 
another round, and added her shrill quota 
to the tirade. I remarked here, as else- 
where, how far more copious is the female 
mind in the material of insult. The audi- 
ence laughed in high good humour over the 
man's declamations ; but they bridled and 
cried aloud under the woman's pungent 
sallies. She picked out the sore points. 
She had the honour of the village at her 
mercy. Voices answered her angrily out 
of the crowd, and received a smarting 
retort for their trouble. A couple of old 
ladies beside me, who had duly paid for 



Prtcy and the Marionettes 195 

their seats, waxed very red and indignant, 
and discoursed to each other audibly about 
the impudence of these mountebanks ; but 
as soon as the show-woman caught a whis- 
per of this, she was down upon them with 
a swoop : if mesdames could persuade their 
neighbours to act with common honesty, 
the mountebanks, she assured them, would 
be polite enough : mesdames had probably 
had their bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass 
of wine that evening ; the mountebanks 
also had a taste for soup, and did not 
choose to have their little earnings stolen 
from them before their eyes. Once, things 
came as far as a brief personal encounter 
between the showman and some lads, in 
which the former went down as readily as 
one of his own marionettes to a peal of 
jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this 
scene, because I am pretty well acquainted 
with the ways of French strollers, more or 
less artistic ; and have always found them 
singularly pleasing. Any stroller must be 
dear to the right-thinking heart ; if it were 



19^ An Inland Voyage 

only as a living protest against offices and 
the mercantile spirit, and as something to 
remind us, that life is not by necessity the 
kind of thing we generally make it. Even 
a German band, if you see it leaving town 
in the early morning for a campaign in 
country places, among trees and meadows, 
has a romantic flavour for the imagination. 
There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but 
his heart will stir a little at sight of a gyp- 
sies* camp. " We are not cotton-spinners 
all ; " or, at least, not all through. There 
is some life in humanity yet : and youth 
will now and again find a brave word to say 
in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situa- 
tion to go strolling with a knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facili- 
ties for intercourse with French gymnasts ; 
for England is the natural home of gym- 
nasts. This or that fellow, in his tights 
and spangles, is sure to know a word or two 
of English, to have drunk EngHsh aff-n-aff, 
and perhaps performed in an English 
music-hall. He is a countryman of mine 
by profession. He leaps, like the Belgian 



Precy and the Marionettes 197 

boating men, to the notion that I must be 
an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favourite ; he 
has little or no tincture of the artist in his 
composition ; his soul is small and pedes- 
trian, for the most part, since his profession 
makes no call upon it, and does not accus- 
tom him to high ideas. But if a man is 
only so much of an actor that he can 
stumble through a farce, he is made free 
of a new order of thoughts. He has some- 
thing else to think about beside the 
money-box. He has a pride of his own, 
and, what is of far more importance, he has 
an aim before him that he can never quite 
attain. He has gone upon a pilgrimage 
that will last him his life-long, because 
there is no end to it short of perfection. 
He will better upon himself a little day by 
day ; or even if he has given up the attempt, 
he will always remember that once upon a 
time he had conceived this high ideal, that 
once upon a time he had fallen in love with 
a star. " 'Tis better to have loved and 
lost." Although the moon should have 



igS An Inland Voyage 

nothing to say to EndymioHy although he 
should settle down with Audrey and feed 
pigs, do you not think he would move with 
a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts 
to the end ? The louts he meets at church 
never had a fancy above Audrey s snood ; 
but there is a reminiscence in Endymiofis 
heart that, like a spice, keeps it fresh and 
haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art, 
leaves a fine stamp on a man's counte- 
nance. I remember once dining with a 
party in the inn at Chateau Landon. Most 
of them were unmistakable bagmen ; others 
well-to-do peasantry ; but there was one 
young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood 
out from among the rest surprisingly. It 
looked more finished ; more of the spirit 
looked out through it ; it had a living, 
expressive air, and you could see that his 
eyes took things in. My companion and 
I wondered greatly who and what he could 
be. It was fair time in Chateau Landon^ 
and when we went along to the booths, 
we had our question answered ; for there 



Precy and the Marionettes 199 

was our friend busily fiddling for the 
peasants to caper to. He was a wander- 
ing violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the 
inn where I was staying, in the department 
of Seine et Marne. There was a father 
and mother ; two daughters, brazen, blowsy 
huzzies, who sang and acted, without an 
idea of how to set about either ; and a 
dark young man, like a tutor, a recalci- 
trant house-painter, who sang and acted 
not amiss. The mother was the genius of 
the party, so far as genius can be spoken 
of with regard to such a pack of incompe- 
tent humbugs ; and her husband could not 
find words to express his admiration for her 
comic countryman. " You should see my 
old woman," said he, and nodded his beery 
countenance. One night, they performed 
in the stable-yard, with flaring lamps : 
a wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon 
by a village audience. Next night, as 
soon as the lamps were lighted, there came 
a plump of rain, and they had to sweep 
away their baggage as fast as possible, and 



200 An Inland Voyage 

make off to the barn where they harboured, 
cold, wet, and supperless. In the morning, 
a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a 
heart for strollers as I have myself, made 
a little collection, and sent it by my hands 
to comfort them for their disappointment. 
I gave it to the father ; he thanked me 
cordially, and we drank a cup together in 
the kitchen, talking of roads, and audi- 
ences, and hard times. 

When I was going, up got my old 
stroller, and off with his hat. " I am 
afraid," said he, " that Monsieur will think 
me altogether a beggar ; but I have an- 
other demand to make upon him." I began 
to hate him on the spot. " We play again 
to-night," he went on. " Of course, I shall 
refuse to accept any more money from 
Monsieur and his friends, who have been 
already so liberal. But our programme of 
to-night is something truly creditable ; and 
I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honour 
us with his presence." And then, with a 
shrug and a smile : " Monsieur understands 
— the vanity of an artist ! " Save the 



Precy and the Marionettes 201 

mark ! The vanity of an artist ! That is 
the kind of thing that reconciles me to life: 
a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, 
with the manners of a gentleman, and the 
vanity of an artist, to keep up his self- 
respect ! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de 
Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I 
saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see 
him often again. Here is his first pro- 
gramme, as I found it on the breakfast 
table, and have kept it ever since as a relic 
of bright days : 

** Mesdames et Messieurs^ 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de 
Vauversin auront Vhonneur de chanter ce 
soir les morceaux suivants. 

''Mademoiselle Ferrario chant era — Mi- 
gjion — Oiseaux Lagers — France — Des Fran- 
qais dorment la — Le chdteau bleu — Ok 
voulez-vous alter ? 

"- M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et 
M. Robinet — Les plongeurs h cheval — Le 
Mari m^conteyit — Tais-toi, gafnin — Mon voi- 



202 An Inland Voyage 

sin r original — Heureux comme qa — Comme 
on est tromp^y 

They made a stage at one end of the 
salle-a-manger , And what a sight it was 
to see M. de Vauversiny with a cigarette in 
his mouth, twanging a guitar, and follow- 
ing Mademoiselle Ferrarids eyes with the 
obedient, kindly look of a dog ! The enter- 
tainment wound up with a tombola, or 
auction of lottery tickets: an admirable 
amusement, with all the excitement of 
gambling, and no hope of gain to make 
you ashamed of your eagerness ; for there, 
all is loss ; you make haste to be out of 
pocket ; it is a competition who shall lose 
most money for the benefit of M. de Vaii- 
versin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a 
great head of black hair, a vivacious and 
engaging air, and a smile that would be 
delightful if he had better teeth. He was 
once an actor in the CMtelet ; but he con- 
tracted a nervous affection from the heat 
and glare of the footlights, which unfitted 



Precy and the Marionettes 203 

him for the stage. At this crisis Mademoi- 
selle Ferrarioy otherwise Mademoiselle Rita 
of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wander- 
ing fortunes. '' I could never forget the 
generosity of that lady," said he. He 
wears trousers so tight that it has long 
been a problem to all who knew him how 
he manages to get in and out of them. 
He sketches a little in water-colours; he 
writes verses ; he is the most patient of 
fishermen, and spent long days at the 
bottom of the inn-garden fruitlessly dab- 
bling a line in the clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his 
experiences over a bottle of wine ; such 
a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a 
ready smile at his own mishaps, and every 
now and then a sudden gravity, like a man 
who should hear the surf roar while he 
was telling the perils of the deep. For 
it was no longer ago than last night, per- 
haps, that the receipts only amounted to a 
franc and a half, to cover three francs of 
railway fare and two of board and lodging. 
The Maire, a man worth a million of 



204 An Inland Voyage 

money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly 
applauding Mdlle. Ferrario, and yet gave no 
more than three sous the whole evening. 
Local authorities look with such an evil eye 
upon the strolling artist. Alas ! I know it 
well, who have been myself taken for one, 
and pitilessly incarcerated on the strength 
of the misapprehension. Once, M. de Vau- 
versin visited a commissary of police for 
permission to sing. The commissary, who 
was smoking at his ease, politely doffed 
his hat upon the singer's entrance. " Mr. 
Commissary," he began, " I am an artist." 
And on went the commissary's hat again. 
No courtesy for the companions of Apollo ! 
" They are as degraded as that," said M. 
de Vauversin, with a sweep of his cigarette. 
But what pleased me most was one out- 
break of his, when we had been talking all 
the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
pinchings of his wandering life. Some 
one said, it would be better to have a 
million of money down, and Mdlle. Fer- 
rario admitted that she would prefer that 
mightily. ** E/i dien, nioi non ; — not I," 



Precy and the Marionettes 205 

cried De Vauversin, striking the table with 
his hand. " If anyone is a failure in the 
worid, is it not I ? I had an art, in which 
I have done things well — as well as some — 
better perhaps than others ; and now it is 
closed against me. I must go about the 
country gathering coppers and singing 
nonsense. Do you think I regret my life ? 
Do you think I would rather be a fat 
burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! I have had 
moments when I have been applauded on 
the boards : I think nothing of that ; but 
I have known in my own mind sometimes, 
when I had not a clap from the whole 
house, that I had found a true intonation, 
or an exact and speaking gesture ; and 
then, messieurs, I have known what pleas- 
ure was, what it was to do a thing well, 
what it was to be an artist. And to know 
what art is, is to have an interest for ever, 
such as no burgess can find in his petty 
concerns. Tenez, messieurs^ je vais vous le 
dire — it is like a religion." 

Such, making some allowance for the 
tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of 



2o6 An Inland Voyage 

translation, was the profession of faith of 
M. de Vauversin. I have given him his 
own name, lest any other wanderer should 
come across him, with his guitar and ciga- 
rette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario ; for 
should not all the world delight to honour 
this unfortunate and loyal follower of the 
Muses ? May Apollo send him rimes hith- 
erto undreamed of ; may the river be no 
longer scanty of her silver fishes to his 
lure ; may the cold not pinch him on long 
winter rides, nor the village jack-in-ofifice 
affront him with unseemly manners ; and 
may he never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario 
from his side, to follow with his dutiful 
eyes and accompany on the guitar ! 

The marionettes made a very dismal 
entertainment. They performed a piece, 
called Pyramiis and Thisbe, in five mortal 
acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully 
as long as the performers. One marionette 
was the king ; another the wicked coun- 
sellor ; a third, credited with exceptional 
beauty, represented Thishe ; and then there 
were guards, and obdurate fathers, and 



Precy and the Marionettes 207 

walking gentlemen. Nothing particular 
took place during the two or three acts 
that I sat out ; but you will be pleased 
to learn that the unities were properly 
respected, and the whole piece, with one 
exception, moved in harmony with clas- 
sical rules. That exception was the comic 
countryman, a lean marionette in wooden 
shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad 
patois much appreciated by the audience. 
He took unconstitutional liberties with 
the person of his sovereign ; kicked his 
fellow marionettes in the mouth with his 
wooden shoes, and whenever none of the 
versifying suitors were about, made love to 
Thisbe on his own account in comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little 
prologue, in which the showman made a 
humorous eulogium of his troop, praising 
their indifference to applause and hisses, 
and their single devotion to their art, were 
the only circumstances in the whole affair 
that you could fancy would so much as 
raise a smile. But the villagers of Pr(^cy 
seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a 



2o8 An Inland Voyage 

thing is an exhibition, and you pay to see 
it, it is nearly certain to amuse. If we were 
charged so much a head for sunsets, or if 
God sent round a drum before the haw- 
thorns came in flower, what a work should 
we not make about their beauty ! But 
these things, like good companions, stupid 
people early cease to observe : and the Ab- 
stract Bagman tittups past in his spring 
gig, and is positively not aware of the 
flowers along the lane, or the scenery of 
the weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE WORLD 

/^F the next two days' sail little remains 
in my mind, and nothing whatever in 
my note-book. The river streamed on stead- 
ily through pleasant riverside landscapes. 
Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in 
blue blouses, diversified the green banks ; 
and the relation of the two colours was like 
that of the flower and the leaf in the forget- 
me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not ; I 
think Thdophile Gautier might thus have 
characterised that two days' panorama. 
The sky was blue and cloudless ; and the 
sliding surface of the river held up, in 
smooth places, a mirror to the heaven and 
the shores. The washerwomen hailed us 
laughingly ; and the noise of trees and 
water made an accompaniment to our doz- 
ing thoughts, as we fleeted down the 
stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable pur- 
14 



2IO An Inland Voyage 

pose of the river, held the mind in chain. 
It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong 
and easy in its gait, hke a grown man full of 
determination. The surf was roaring for it 
on the sands of Havre. 

For my own part, slipping along this 
moving thoroughfare in my fiddle-case of a 
canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary 
for my ocean. To the civilised man, there 
must come, sooner or later, a desire for 
civilisation. I was weary of dipping the 
paddle ; I was weary of living on the skirts 
of life ; I wished to be in the thick of it 
once more ; I wished to get to work ; I 
wished to meet people who understood my 
own speech, and could meet with me on 
equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a 
curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, 
and we drew up our keels for the last time 
out of that river of Oise that had faithfully 
piloted them, through rain and sunshine, 
for so long. For so many miles had this 
fleet and footless beast of burthen charioted 
our fortunes, that we turned our back upon 



Back to the World 211 

it with a sense of separation. We had 
made a long detour out of the world, but 
now we were back in the familiar places, 
where life itself makes all the running, and 
we are carried to meet adventure without 
a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to 
return, like the voyager in the play, and 
see what rearrangements fortune had per- 
fected the while in our surroundings ; what 
surprises stood ready made for us at home ; 
and whither and how far the world had 
voyaged in our absence. You may paddle 
all day long ; but it is when you come back 
at nightfall, and look in at the familiar 
room, that you find Love or Death await- 
ing you beside the stove ; and the most 
beautiful adventures are not thosC ?ve go 
to seek. 



THE WORKS OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Edited by Sidney Colvin. With drawings by Peixotto 
and GuERiN. 2 vols., 8vo, $5.00 net. 



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chapters of "St. Ives." 

In the South Seas. 

With Map. i2mo, $1.50. 

This volume is made up of selections firom the interesting sketches contributed 
to periodicals by Mr. Stevenson, narrating his experiences and observations in the 
Marquesas (the scene of Melville's "Typee"), Paumotus, and the Gilbert Islands, 
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THE WORKS OF ROBERT L OUIS STEVENSON 
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The Wrecker. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. With 12 
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•' It seems much the most enticing romance at present before the world." 

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The Merry Men, 

And Other Tales and Fables, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

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The Dynamiter. 

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THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON- 

Virginibus Puerisque« 

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Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 

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Contents : Victor Hugo's Romances, Some Aspects of Robert Burns, Walt 
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A Foot=Note to History. 

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THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

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In these delightful fables will be found a new and interesting expression of Mr. 
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Macaire. A Melodramatic 
Farce. By R. L. Stevenson 
and W. E. Henley. i6mo, 
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IN SPECIAL EDITIONS. 

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